Sacred Body

Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit
A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of Yoga and Tantra
By The Same Author

Tantra: The Yoga of Love and Awakening
Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit

A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of Yoga and Tantra
Ramesh Bjonnes
Copyright 2012 by Ramesh Bjonnes All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by InnerWorld Publications, PO Box 1613, San Germn, Puerto Rico, 00683. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012909776 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 978-1-881717-15-7
To Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, the teacher of my teachers, who said that Tantra is the process of transforming ones latent divinity into Supreme Divinity. A person who, irrespective of caste, creed or religion aspires for [such] spiritual expansionis 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. This 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 These 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 The writings of Ramesh Bjonnes cut right to the core of the spiritual 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 recommend him. Kaoverii Weber, founder Subtle Yoga Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit is an inspiring and provocative book. These 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
Introduction1
Part One: Sacred Rivers: The History of Yoga and Tantra

Brief History of the Yoga and Tantra Tradition Three Ways to View the Ancient History of Yoga Before Buddha was a Buddhist, He was a Tantric Yogi How Old Is Your Yoga Practice? Dispelling a Myth About Women and Yoga
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11 16 24 29 34
Part Two: The Path of Love and Ecstasy

The Yoga of Tantric Love: Seven Reasons Why its Not Just About Sex Tantra and Sex Yoga for Lovers Can Orgasm Lead to Enlightenment? Tantric Love: Why is Krishna Blue and Radha Golden? Tantra and Kundalini: Uncoiling The Sacred Snake of Sex and Liberation Fat, Naked and Enlightened: The Crazy Yogis of Love Tantra: The Yoga of Union
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41 48 51 55 58 60 63 67
Part Three: The Wisdom of Yoga
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Yoga Means Union: The Spiritual, Historical and Psychological Reasons71 Tantra and the Yoga Sutras: If Patanjali Had Been a Woman 78 A Comparative Examination of the Body-Mind-Spirit Connection 80 Yoga and Reincarnation: To Believe or Not to Believe? 83 Your Mind Is More Powerful Than Your Brain 88 Religion, Science, or Dharma: Whats the Difference? 91
Yoga and Activism 95 Can We be Spiritual without Transformation: A Tantric Perspective99 Three Ways to Practice Yoga 102 Three Ways to Enlightenment 106 What is Rajadhiraja Yoga? 113 What the Bleep is Dharma? 117
Part Four: The Spirit of Practice
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The Power of Sitting Now 123 The Yoga of Fierce Enlightenment 126 Is Yoga an Art, a Science, or a Religion? 131 Yoga: Multiple Pathways to the Path of One! 135 Bhakti Yoga: the Cure for Spiritual Heart Disease 139 Diet for a Yogi Planet 141 Why do People Chant OM at the End of Yoga Class? 146 Why do Modern Yogis Believe Brahmacarya Means Celibacy? 149 Yoga May Be Bad For Your Health: Seven Ways to Avoid Yoga Injuries 151 You Are Already Enlightened! True or False? 154 Ten Simple Secrets to a Great Meditation Practice 160 Twelve Ways to Meditate Like a (Real) Yogi 162 Why are People Afraid of the Tantric Guru? 165 Why Yogis Eat Carrots Rather than Cows 170 Tantric Ethics for Self and Society 173 The Power of Mantras 176 Tantra Practice: Three Steps to Meaningful Mindfulness Meditation178 Introducing a Meditation Practice 182 Select Bibliography 184 Acknowledgments188
Introduction
An Integral Perspective on Tantra and Yoga
Tantra is generally known 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 Americas spiritual evolution. This next step seems to have already started, not only in America, but all over the world. A good indicator of the growing interest in Tantra is that Georg Feuerstein, one of the worlds most prolific authors on yoga, changed the title of his 2012 edition of The Encyclopedia of Yoga to The 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 essentialbecause these two traditions are intimately linked. In the words of the founder of the Bihar School of Yoga, Swami Satyananda Saraswati, The techniques of Yoga have their source in Tantra and the two cannot be separated. There 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
sacred body, sacred spirit
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. This 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. The 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 worlds wisdom traditions, in all paths that lead to liberation. Tantric yogis embrace both unity and duality, both wholeness and opposites. They have realized that these opposites dissolve in Brahma, in Spiritand that the inner essence of all life and all things are bliss and love. That is why Tantra is often called the path of ecstasy, or the path of love.
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Neuroscience, through the research of Dr. Candace Perth, has now recognized that we humans are hardwired for bliss. Similarly, Tantra believes that everything is divinethat 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 spiritualityyoga postures, meditation, prayer, chanting, and dancingdiligently and with total abandon. We must walk our spiritual talk passionately. Its 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 fearlessa spirituality that encourages and enables us to overcome limitations, phobias, 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 opposites, all forms and energies are different expressions of God that ultimately 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 liberation, freedom, and bliss. As the yoga of everything, Tantra is an integral 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. The 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 liberation 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 movement 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
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 speaking, Shivas Cosmic Consciousness is inherent in everything, and Shaktis 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. This 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 unionthe 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. The 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 mysterious 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. The goal of Tantras physical and mental exercises is to create a healthy body and mind and thus a conducive environment for spiritual practicefor meditation. The physical exercises are part of a nested continuum, from body to mind to spirit. The body is thus a springboard from which a self-inspired and sustainable spirit can soar. The intertwined distinctions Tantra makes between body, mind, and spirit is a brilliant insight. Although everything is sacred, Tantra realizes 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
introduction
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 eternitys sun rise. In other words, the final satisfaction lies beyond both body and mind, in the peaceful domain of spirit, where all limitations and contradictions 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. Through the practice of Tantric yoga and meditation, we can achieve this realization of spiritual union and inner peace. Tantra represents integrated practicethe 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 fitness; 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. These 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 reemergence 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.
The Books 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,
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. The 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 creationbirth, life, and deathin the infinite, cosmic womb of her inner being. The 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. The 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. Thus, everything is sacred. The Sacred Spirit is God in all living beings and the sublime consciousness in all the worlds manifestations. The 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 Shaktis 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 seeds 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. The 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.
The Use of Sanskrit

This 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
introduction
usage, such as samskara, or vritti, have generally been translated in parenthesis and/or explained in more detail. The 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 Brahm. This 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 250 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

It is commonly believed that the ancient yoga traditions spiritual quest culminated about 200 bce, when the Indian sage Pantanjali composed his influential Yoga Sutras. According to some yoga scholars, this event signifies the Classical Period of Yoga (200 bce to 400 ce). The 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 bce), flourished during the Epic Yoga period of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita (600 bce), and culminated in the Classical Yoga of Patanjalis Yoga Sutras (200 bce). But, according to other scholars and masters of yoga and Tantra, this view disregards significant aspects of yogas 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 tranquility, he prescribed the eight-limbed path of Asthanga Yoga. In Patanjalis 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). This 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 riversthe 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.
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Most Western writers on yoga believe that Tantra emerged in India in the Middle Ages, a few hundred years after Patanjali, from about 400 ce to 1200 ce, 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. The spiritual re-emergence spurred by the Tantric yogis of the Middle Ages is perhaps unprecedented in the written history of the worlds 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. The modern yoga posture movement in the Westwhich originated with Krishnamacarya, in the early 1900s, and his students B.K.S. Iyengar and Patabhi Joise, who brought the teachings to the Westis 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 healthbut even this form of posture yoga has its roots in Tantra in the form of Hatha Yoga. There 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 (320 to 550 ce). There 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 ce according to Western scholars and to the fourth century bce 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
sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra
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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 (12,500-9000 bce). 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. The figure was uncovered by Sir John Marshall in 1927 and dates back to about 3500 bce. Other yogi-like artifacts found at Mehrgarh date as far back as 6500 bce. 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. These 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. The Samkhya Karika text from 200 ce was one of the main influences regarding the rise of the Tantras as a body of literature. The sage Maharishi Kapila is said to be the original author of this text of dualistic philosophy. Considered to be the philosophical basis for Ayurveda, Indias 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.
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While the Mahabharata epic dates to 400 bce, it is commonly understood 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 1500 bce. Anandamurti, who considers Samkhya the worlds 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. That 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 Tantras brilliant insightsthat Brahma is both One and Many, Brahma is both Consciousness (Purusha) and Energy (Prakrti). The 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. The South Indian Ramanuja (1100 ce) tackled this debate elegantly by promoting his qualified nonduality, which is also the central thesis of Tantric philosophy from Abhinava Gupta to Anandamurti. This philosophy 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. This 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.
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Tantra prides itself on being a practical art and science rather than a philosophy. Patanjalis 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 Patanjalis philosophical treatise. Prior to that time, Tantra most likely had its early roots in the shamanic tradition of prehistoric India. Adi Shankara (800 ce), 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.
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Three Ways to View the Ancient History of Yoga

Indian civilization emerged about 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 important 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 Asiathe 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 worlds first great religions, Buddhism and Jainism. More significantly, long before the birth of Buddha (500 bce), India had already developed the sophisticated sciences of yoga, meditation, Ayurvedic medicine, and one of the worlds most sophisticated and spiritual languages, namely Sanskrit. While there is general agreement among scholars regarding the antiquity of Indias civilization, there is less agreement about how and when it developed its advanced culture and sacred traditions. There are currently three main theories on ancient Indian history: 1. Most Western and Indian academics hold the view that India was invaded by Vedic Aryan settlers around 1900 bce. These Aryans worshiped the sun god, Surya, and brought with them their Rig Vedic religion. This 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. These patriarchal and martial Aryans, these academics claim, soon conquered northern India and destroyed the great Indus Valley civilization, where yoga was already practiced by Tantric (Shaiva) ascetics. They massacred people and reduced the surviving Dravidian shudras
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to slavery without regard for rank or learning. This conflict has been described in the famous epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Over time, India became a blended civilizationpart Aryan Vedic, part Dravidian Shaiva, with a liberal admixture of Jain and Buddhist traditionsand this blended culture is what we today know as Indian civilization. 2. Western yoga scholars, including Georg Feuerstein and David Frawley, as well as some Indian writers, especially within the fundamentalist Hindutva movement, subscribe to the theory that there was never an Aryan invasion around 1900 bce, and that yoga comes solely from the Vedic tradition. This One River Theory 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 invasion 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. 3. This last option brings us to my own Two River Theory 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 70005000 bce. Therefore, the blending of the Vedic and Tantric (Shaiva) cultures of India had already matured by the time the Indus Valley civilization was depopulated around 2000 bce, not by violence but by climatic changes. Not long after, around 1500 bce, India produced the worlds first coherent philosophy and cosmology, namely sage Kapilas Tantricinspired Samkhya philosophy, which today is popularly known as the philosophy of Ayurveda, Indias 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 200 bce, 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.
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These 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. The first theory has dated the Aryan invasion rather late (1900 bce) and does not reflect the genetic research of Dr. Spencer Wells, who claims the invasion started much earlierabout 70005000 bce. In other words, if the migration took place several thousands of years earlier, the alleged violent invasion around 1900 bce is highly unlikely. Indeed, as suggested as a possibility by Feuerstein, Kak and Frawleyproponents of theory number twothis 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 1900 bce date. In Feuersteins new version of his book The Yoga Tradition, he similarly suggests the Indo-European Aryans arrived in India as early as 6500 bce, 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 peoplesthe Dravidians, Mongolians and Austricshad 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 1900 bce, 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 outlooksone we may broadly term Vedic/Priestly, and one we may broadly term Tantric/Yogicgradually formed what we today know as the Indian, or Hindu, civilization. These 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: The yoga we know today was developed as part of the tantric civilization
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which existed in Indiamore than 10,000 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 timeline emerges:*
90005000 BCEProto-Tantra
Rudimentary forms of shamanistic Tantra practiced by Dravidians and Mongolians. Proto-Tantric city complex established at Mehrgarh around 6000 bce. 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 BCETantra Systematized by Shiva

Agama and Nigama, the philosophical and practical teachings, are given by Shiva and his wife Parvati. Shiva introduces concept of Dharmathe 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 systematizes 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.
50002000 BCETantra-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. The Dravidians establish a Tantra-oriented civilization in the Indus Valley region. This civilization gradually fuses with the Vedic civilization and the Vedic warrior clans eventually gain political and economic control, but the peoples religion remains
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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. The three other Vedic textsthe Atharva Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Yajur Vedaare composed as oral teachings during this period.
2000 BCETransformation of the Original Shiva Tantra

Shiva Tantra (also termed the Shaivite tradition) transforms into two branches of yoga, the Gaodiya and the Kashmiri Schools. The Gaodiya School was popular in East India (Bengal) and was only marginally influenced by the Vedas. The Indus Valley civilization, which by then is a fusion of Tantric and Vedic influences, is abandoned due to climatic changes.
1500 BCEKrishna and Samkhya

Krishna formulates three branches of yogaaction (Karma), devotion (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. The Samkhya philosophy based on Tantra is written by Kapila; this text is also called Kapilasya Tantra.
700300 BCEThe Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata

These 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 BCEPatanjali
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. The idea that Brahma comprises both Shiva and Shakti is now widely accepted and consummated in the Ardha-Narishvara, an idol depicting half a man (Shiva) and half a woman (Shakti).
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100 CETirumular
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.
4001200 CETantra 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 spirituality, but in reality the Tantric age started in 5000 BCE and lasted for thousands of years. Such texts include the Kularnava Tantra and the Mahanirvana Tantra.
600 CEAge 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 CEYoga Vashista

This great Tantric yogi returns from China where he learned the subtle practice of Tantra meditation. His esoteric teachings on Tantric meditation and philosophy are compiled in the book, Yoga Vashista.
900 CEAbhinava Gupta

This Tantric Renaissance man revives Kashmir Shaivism, lays the foundation of Indian aesthetics, and writes an encyclopedia on nondualist Tantric yoga.
1000 CEKularnava Tantra

This seventeen-chapter work contains over two thousand verses and is considered one of the most important Tantric texts.
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1000-1200 CEThe Nathas Develop Hatha Yoga

The founder of this movement, Matsyendranath, was a Shaiva Tantric whose main disciple, Gorakshanath, systematized and further advanced the practices of Hatha Yoga.
1100 CEMahanirvana Tantra

Considered by some as the most important of the Hindu Tantric scriptures, this fourteen- chapter text defines yoga in accordance with Shivas teachings as the union of individual self (Jivatman) with the Cosmic Self (Paramatman).
12711296 CEJnaneshvar
A genius Renaissance man and Tantric adept, Jnaneshvar composed the Gitagovinda at the age of 19, an epic poem reenacting the Bhagavad Gita. Merging the Vaishnava movement with Kashmir Shiva Tantra, Jnaneshvar created a popular Bhakti movement in north India. The nineteenth-century sage Ramana Maharishi called him the king of saints.
13001700 CEYogic 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. These include Shiva Samhita, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita and several Yoga Upanishads.
1500 CECaetanya Mahaprabhu

A Tantric adept, Caetanya is undoubtedly the most well known and celebrated Bhakti yogi of India.
15002000 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
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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 CEJohn Woodroffe

The seminal book The Principles of Tantra is first published. Woodroffes second classic on Tantra, The Serpent Power, was published in 1918.
19002010 CEKrishnamacarya and others

Krishnamacarya (1888-1989), 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. These students become the teachers of many of the most popular yoga teachers working in the West today.
19221990 CE Anandamurti
Anandamurti synthesizes the main features of Shivas 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.
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Before Buddha was a Buddhist, He was a Tantric Yogi

The story about Buddhas enlightenment under the fig tree in Bodh Gaya is commonly told in books and lectures by Buddhist teachers. 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 Buddhisms 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 nonAryans 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: The 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. The ancient concepts of Shaivism, Tantrism, Shaktism, and Yoga, together with the ancient Samkhya philosophy, lay beneath the surface and continued 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.
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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 historical and psychological simplicityfor in reality the priest and yogi, at least in India, are often various psychological and cultural aspects of the same personwe 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 realize: 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. Theresa 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 (200 bce); that yoga did not originate in the Vedas as most scholars and contemporary yogis believeand 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 cultivated their wisdom in silence in forest ashrams and mountain caves. Their untamed culture was gradually absorbed by mainstream Vedic society over a period of thousands of years. The young Buddha was often seen wandering among these yogi outcasts.
Buddha, Tantra and the Vedic Priesthood

Georg Feuerstein writes in his book Tantra: The 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. They distinguish between Vedic and Tantricvaidika and tantrikacurrents 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 rishisand on the other side, the non-Aryans Tantra sadhana, the practice of self-control and attainment of divine knowledge.
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These two sacred rivers of India stretch far back into historical antiquity, 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. The 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 civilization. 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: The figure of Gosala is very important, for in presenting a different 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.
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The 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. Through yogic practice and ethical behavior, they argued, one could get one leg up on ones karmaand 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. This 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. Through 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 yogis thirst for enlightenment was not quenched. He was not convinced he had attained the spiritual plateau of permanent awakening, or enlightenment. Therefore, 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 banyantree near Gaya and attained spiritual enlightenment (Buddhahood).
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When I lived in an ashram in Nepal in the early 80s, I was initiated into the practice of Tantric dhyan meditation, which corresponds to the seventh limb of the Asthanga Yoga of Patanjali. The practicewhich culminates after performing the other three meditation lessons of this well known eight-limbed path, namely pratyahara, pranayama, and dharanainvolves 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 figuresuch as a deity, or a geometric yantrato reach the formless. The 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 Harveys excellent travel book Journey to Ladakh in which he describes in detail a Buddhist Tantric practice that is stunningly similar to my own. These 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 exponent 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.
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How Old Is Your Yoga Practice?

Mark Singletons Yoga Body 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, its a near perfect book about the practice and history of modern yoga. The book is mainly about how yogas modern proponentsT. 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. They especially embraced its more esoteric forms of gymnastics, including the influential Swedish techniques of Ling (1766-1839). 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. This emphasis is in itself a worthy enterprise for students of everything 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. Krishnamacaryas humid and hot palace studio in Mysore to Bikrams artificially heated studios in Los Angeles. Singletons 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. Thus, 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
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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 traditional yoga. The 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. This kind of ranking is counterproductive and a waste of time, maintains Singleton. In other words, the only ranking allowed is noranking. The 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 practicea body, mind, spirit exercise. So how does Feuersteins integral yoga homonym differ from the non-integral modern posture yoga homonym presented to us by Singleton? Simply put, Feuersteins 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 todays modern yoga studios. Singleton mentions all this in his books Concluding Reflections. In other words, it is strategically important for Singleton to criticize Feuersteins 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. Then Singleton quotes Feuerstein, who writes that when yoga reached Western shores it was
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gradually stripped of its spiritual orientation and remodeled into fitness 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 Feuersteins point. Feuerstein simply points out how the physical exercise part of modern yoga lacks the deep spiritual orientation found in traditional yoga. And that is a crucial difference. Then Singleton exclaims that Feuersteins assertions miss the deeply spiritual orientation of some modern bodybuilding and womens fitness training in the harmonial gymnastics tradition. While I am quite clear about what Feuerstein means by deeply spiritual, 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 (samadhi), 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 integral 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. The 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? The 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,
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one of posture yogas 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 wont do the trick. You can stand on your head and do power yoga from dawn to midnight, but you probably wont 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 enlightened 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. These 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. Singletons sole focus on describing the physical practice and history 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 beingfrom 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
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beingphysical, 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. The more holistic our yoga practice becomesthat is, the more spiritual practice is added to our posture practice, the more these two seemingly opposite polesthe body and the spiritwill 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 Singletons 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.
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Dispelling a Myth About Women and Yoga

Some contemporary yoga bloggers 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. This 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. They 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. Think about it this way: We know that Sequoyah developed the Cherokee alphabet in the early 1800s and that the first Cherokee literature was published in 1827. 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. This is the kind of logic the Western yoga academicians use when discussing the history of yoga. The practice of yoga did not start at the time the first literature of yoga was publishedthese 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 existsthe Shiva seals, for example, of a yogi in the rather complex goraksasana position, which carbon
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dating has confirmed is over five thousand years oldis 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, its 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. There are no other asanas described in the Yoga Sutras. Hence, it is convenient to claim, as most yoga academicians do, that Hatha Yoga developed much later. The Yoga Sutras is not a how-to book on practicing yoga postures; its 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 postures, 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 (30 April 1896 - 27 August 1982) 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
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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. Throughout 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 patriarchal; 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 scriptures, 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. The way out for women in Vedic society was that they were allowed to be swamis, ochre clad holy women, or yoginis. That 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 influentialin 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. These 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 tradition 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. The Bauls of Bengal are ecstatic singers, dancers and meditators who
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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. The number of female yoga adepts may have been considerably higher in Indias past, however, when Tantra was more commonplace. Acclaimed yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein writes in his book The Yoga Tradition: Allama Praphudeva [a Tantric yogi from the Natha tradition] was a contemporary of Basava (1120-1168 ce) 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 practitioners 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) Mirabaicelebrated poet, singer, and renowned Bhakti Yogi (ca. fourteenth century) Sarada DeviBengali yogini and spiritual head of the Ramakrishna Mission after her husband Ramakrishnas death (nineteenth century) KaoshitakiYogini, great scholar and wife of the celebrated yogi Maharishi Agastya, from South India (ca. early Middle Ages) Karkati RakshasiAyurvedic doctor and one of Indias first yogini surgeons, apprentice of Shiva (the King of Yoga (ca. 5000 bce) (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 its Not Just About Sex
On some yogic and 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. The yogis 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. The 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. The 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. This knowledge, this wisdom, is called madhuvidya, or honey knowledge, 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:

1. 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,
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or desire. In Tantra, the yogi is advised to turn kama into premato see everything as sacred, as Divine. For those pure in mind, everything is pure. --Georg Feuerstein, from Tantra: The 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 emotionseven anger, even lonelinessas great vehicles to enhance spiritual devotion. Through spiritual longing, we open our hearts for greater vulnerability and union, greater ecstatic bliss and communion with the Divine. That is, if we really and truly long for sacred communion. In truth there is neither purity nor impurity. Therefore, 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 systemeven 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. 2. Tantra sees everything as sacred. Everything is God or Goddess. The consciousness within everything, the latent intelligence in the universe is God, or Shiva. The 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 The 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. That is, yoga is not just a practice on a mat a few times
tantra: the path of love and ecstasy
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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. 3. Tantric love is a form of Bhakti Yoga. Tantra cannot be divorced from the inner essence of its own spiritual 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! This event took place at around 5 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. This focus on passionate love is integral to Tantra. As a spiritual practice, Bhakti Yoga turns desire and attachment, the very antithesis of spiritual liberation, into an alchemical fuel for love and the emancipation of Spirit by worshiping all as God. Thus, 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. The devotee simply loves the Divine without asking anything in return. Kevala means only, so the devotee loves for the sake of love, only love.
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Kevala Bhakti is not attained by baths, exercises, or efforts. Anandamurti, from Subhasita Samgraha
That is, Kevala Bhakti is revealed in the heart when the alchemy of longing has been exhausted and turns into pure love, pure being. 4. 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. That 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. They are always together, always one. They are simply two different 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. The primal, evolutionary force of Shaktiwhich is both real and symbolicis 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. The real knowledge issues from the mystic unification of Shiva and Shakti. It is the cause of liberation. -Tantraloka 5. 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. Thats because the duality of wisdom and ignorance, Vidya and Avidya Shakti, exists at the very root of creation and life itself. Thus, no matter at which stage we are on the spiritual path, there is always the possibility of making mistakes, of being a failure.
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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. That 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. Those who let the body decay, destroy the spirit; And they wont attain the powerful knowledge of truth. Having learned the skill of fostering the body, I fostered the body, and I nurtured the soul. The Perfect One has entered the temple of the body. Tirumular (seventh-century Tantric sage) 6. Tantra is the path of sacred love and (sometimes) the path of sacred sex. The path of Tantra is about experiencing spiritual bliss, to soak the human heart with divine Spirit. Thus, it is often said in the yogic scriptures that Bhakti Yoga, the path of ecstatic love, is the best and safest path. This Yoga of Love is beautifully exemplified in the life and poetry of Rumi, who said, The taste of milk and honey is not it. Love instead that which gave deliciousness. Thats Madhuvidya. Thats 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 7. Tantra is seeing love in everything. Tantra is the path of via positiva. Tantra is an affirmative path. The path of embracing lifes challenges. There is no need to kill the
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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. That is the spirit of Tantra. That is the alchemy of Tantric love. This, then, is the path of Tantric lovethe 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. Through the spiritual practices of posture yoga, mantra meditation, pranayama, chanting, etc., a Tantric churns longing into love and melts separation into togetherness. This 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 (18751939), 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

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.
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Tantra and Sex

The spiritual practice of Tantra, this practical path of self-realization, 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 commonly 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. The reason for this misunderstanding in the West has mainly arisen from a lopsided interpretation of the so-called Five Ms. It is so called, writes Feuerstein, because the names of the five ingredients or substances (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). These Five Ms are also referred to as the five principles (panca tattva). Feuerstein describes how the first four ingredients of these socalled left-hand path practices of Tantraare all thought to have an aphrodisiacal effect, although scholars have speculated a great deal about the fourth ingredient. The final ritual ingredient, Maithuna, he writes, epitomizes the entire Tantric program The 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. They are thus imbued with sacredness and spirituality.
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However, this does not mean that eating large amounts of certain kinds of food or having excessive sexual activity will automatically intensify ones spiritual vision. Tantra sees nothing wrong with seeking 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; its 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. Thirdly, our sense organs, which enjoy sensual and physical pleasures, are themselves limited. They 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. Thus, 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. The 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. The 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 ones intake of wine and meat and, at the same time, to harbor divine feelings while relishing their delights,
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and ultimately to rise above the transient nature of these earthly pleasures all together. For the spiritually inclined yogis, those who want more than material wealth and a great looking body, the Five Ms have a different, more subtle meaning. As Feuerstein writes, In the right-hand schools [the Five Ms] are understood symbolically and are completely internalized. Here is a brief overviewbased on ancient Tantric aphorismsof 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 aspirants ecstatic or intoxicated love of God. Mamsa (meat)one who has control over his or her speech, or one who surrenders all actionsgood, bad, sinful, righteous, or wickedto 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 spiritual persons 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. The etymological meaning of tantra is as follows: tan means to expand and tra means to liberate. Thus Tantra is the spiritual science that liberates the spiritual practitioner 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 lifes ultimate moment of pleasure, the cosmic effulgence of God, Spirit or Brahma. Here and now. In this body, on this very earth. Not in heaven, not tomorrow. Now!
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Yoga for Lovers

The ecstatic poetry of Mirabai and Kabir has been sung in India since the Middle Ages. Even long before their contemporaries, St. Theresa 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 Gods response. There 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. The 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,
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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; its because you have. And if meditation comes really easy to you, and you cant seem to wipe that satisfied glow off your face; its because you have lived it again and again. American poet Jane Hirshfield writes of the mystic, female yogi and poet Mirabai: Sheoffers 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 passions fulfillment requires. In these two ways, Mira demonstrates over and over, that the lover meets fully and intimately the energies of awakening. And through reading 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, cant possibly buy us enlightenment. Forget it, she says, only the deep passions of Bhakti Yoga can bring us closer to our Beloveds arms. Mirabai sings: If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves Then 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: The 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
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Beloved is fierce and non-compromising. Mirabai gave up a comfortable 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. Kabirs poetry also tells us that we dont 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! That 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 theres 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 That, which is deep inside, as much as we desire water when we are really thirsty, or as much as we once intensely desired our partners 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
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pranendrya, the seat of intuition in the heart chakra, where our longing and seeing embrace in the stillness of peace. Then 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.
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Can Orgasm Lead to Enlightenment?

One of the main 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. Then 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 That: Love is a state of being. Sex is energy. Love is wise. Sex is blind. This 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. The term for mindfulness in Sanskrit is smrtito 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.
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Thus 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. This form of meditation has the capacity to take us into a deeper state of silence and spiritual depth than mere mindfulness. And, when remembering, when having attained continuous mindfulness one attains dhruva smrti; that is, one experiences continuous remembering. Remembering what? The remembering that all objects of ones attention are sacred, are divine, are bliss. If youre 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 lasting 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 energies 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 wont 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, Im 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. The genuine power and inner essence of Tantra lie in its ability to transmute our desires. Yes, to transmute. Not to indulge, not to cling,
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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: There 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: The Transmutation of Desire. Lama Yeshe also points out that the Yab-Yum Thanka does not represent sexual intercourse but the experience of total unityof method and wisdom, bliss and emptinesscharacteristic 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 satisfaction.
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Tantric Love: Why is Krishna Blue and Radha Golden?

The Tantric explanation for the symbolic colors of Radhas golden and Krishnas 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 transparent. The 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. The 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. Krishnas 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. They are not two; they are One. As per Tantra, you cannot realize the Absolute Divine without dancing in the world of the relative. Without dancing, moving, expressing in the form of a human body; we cannot experience the ethereal and divine. Thus the body too is divine. Likewise, you cannot truly understand the traps of relativity without knowing the vast radiance of the Absolute. Thus, the arms flung
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ecstatically toward the sky and the feet firmly rooted on the earth are one body. Krishnas love is focused on the sparkling eyes of Radha. And her loving being plunges into the vast ocean of Krishnas gaze. Thus the Absolute Krishna is expressed through the eyes of the relative reality of Radha. Two cosmic beings, One Cosmic Love. Thats the Tantric story of the two radiant loversRadha and Krishna. Hence yoga, from a Tantric perspective, is both worldly and otherworldly, both physical and metaphysical.
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Tantra and Kundalini: Uncoiling The Sacred Snake of Sex and Liberation
Are we humans hardwired for sex and liberation? According to Tantra Yoga, yes we are! In the book Gods of Love and Ecstasy, Alain Danielou links the spiritual 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 areafrom 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. This whole inner enterprise of uncoiling the inner labyrinth is what we call yoga. And it is an enterprise thats been going on for a few thousand years longer than the worlds 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.
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All energy is lodged in this first chakra, the abode of the Shakti. Indeed, there are four fundamental vrittis, or human longings, associated with this chakra: Dharmapsycho-spiritual longing Arthapsychic longing Kmaphysical longing Mokaspiritual 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. Thus, 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. Thats why in India, you will see people worshiping vaginas and penises made of stones. The vagina, the yoni, or Shakti, is the earth labyrinth, the energy from where everything is created. This coiled female energy surrounds the male phallus, the linga, or Shiva, the self-born consciousness 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. These 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 challenging 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. The Tantric science of kundalini, chakras, and vrittisand how these esoteric, inner expressions are awakened, balanced and alchemically tuned by Hatha Yoga and meditationis 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.
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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.
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Fat, Naked and Enlightened: The Crazy Yogis of Love

Theres been numerous crazy yogis of love and radical spirituality throughout the history of yoga. The 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 Chgyam Trungpa was contemporary. But the yoga tradition also has its own gang of crazy-wisdom adepts. The avadhutas, for example, are Tantric yogis known to roam around naked, eat and drink out of human skulls, meditate and sleep in cremation grounds and otherwise commit multiple acts of random wildness. All for the glory of Shiva, the so-called King of Yoga. The 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 its all about the proper clothing, or the proper morals: The Yogi comes along in his famous orange. But if inside he is colorless, then what? Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music. Then what? And heres what he has to say to the spiritual bookworms among us: The sacred books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sidewaysif 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.
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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 spinethus forming the six chakras, the sixth being the one between the eyebrowsuntil they end in each nostril.) The 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. They swirled, they wept, they kicked all habits of convention. All for the glory of wildly embracing their inner Beloved. Mirabais 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 doesnt come or go. One sip from the cup of that sweetness, the world starts to spin. Now Im drunk for life. Unsoberable. Tell them its 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 gestured. 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.
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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 1887. Some biographical sources claim he was several hundred years old. This colorful yogiwhose corpulent body, although naked, might not be a good fit for the pages of Yoga Journalis 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. That kind of Puritanism was introduced by the British, but, after Independence, its no longer enforced. While in India, I met another avadhutanot 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 peoples 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. The avadhuta told me that this was the best day of his life. Having realized his mistakes and thus unburdened by the egos 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? The 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. This, I think, is especially good for us who grew up under the inhibiting Puritanism of Christianity. Its 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.
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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 weve been sitting on our hands in church for too many centuries, and its time to let those arms and legs loose for the praise of God. But, thats 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, its how we are moved under the skin thats important. Heres 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. Kabirs 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. Kabirs poems touch on the secret of this bhakti.
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Tantra: The Yoga of Union

Tantra is often called 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. The 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. This rather dry definition of yoga never appealed to me, nor did it ever quite take hold in Indian culture. Shivas popular Tantric definition is more heart-centered and soulful 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. Through 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 experience of union with the Divine. As an art and a science, yoga aids us in developing a more healthy and balanced lifestyle. The spiritual state of yoga, or union, is often expressed through spiritual love or Bhakti Yoga. Thus 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.
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In the Maya Tantra, one of the ancient texts based on Shivas teachings, 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: The first Indian yogi to visit America, Swami Vivekananda gained worldwide fame at the 1893 Worlds 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 didnt 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. This 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

It is commonly understood 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 increasingly 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 The Yoga Tradition that Patanjalis dualistic philosophy never quite took hold in devotion-oriented 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 1500 bce. In Krishnas 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 6.29-32) 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
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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 Krishnas time, we encounter the book Flow: The 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 Patanjalis most famous yoga sutrayogah citta vritti nirodhahby using the translation of Georg Feuerstein: Yoga is the restrictions of the fluctuation of consciousness. There is not much mention of flow or unity in Patanjalis sutra. Feuersteins translation gives us a sense that yoga is a discipline to chastise the mind into submission. And thats not Feuersteins personal intention. Rather, it seems to be Patanjalis. Feuersteins translation is indeed a lot closer to the literal meaning of Patanjalis 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 Patanjalis words seem to imply. There are no phrases indicating heart or unity or oneness in Patanjalis original sutra. According to contemporary Tantric yoga philosopher and Sanskrit linguist Anandamurti, who interprets this sutra much like Feuerstein, Patanjalis 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 yogathe absence of mental disturbances rather than the inner revelation and feeling that the deep meditational
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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. The 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. That 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 Shivas saying about yoga as union: samyoga yoga ityukto jivatma paramatmanah. The 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. Thus 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 Shivas Tantric perspective, yoga would be experienced as follows: 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 yogaShiva and Krishna. And that link may lay in the way that flow or union or yoga is achieved. The 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 inaction when contemplating our dismal present. But we enter a state of flow the moment we engage in challenging but rewarding activities
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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 aboutthose 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 samadhiwhich are rather rare in yogawe experience at least a psychological resemblance of it. What do I mean by that? There are doors, mirrors, or stages of perception. And as these doors of perception are cleansed through spiritual practice, to use William Blakes famous metaphor, we experience 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. That 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 Anandamurtis yogic mind model. This model differs from the more commonly known Vedantic model of the koshas, or sheets of being. There are, in addition to the body, five states of Anandamurtis yogic mind. The three first stages in this model roughly correspond to the Jungian psychological model: Conscious mind (kamamaya kosha): this state of mind has three functions: 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 functions: memory, contemplation, experience of pleasure and pain, dreaming. There 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.
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Subliminal mind (vijanamaya kosha): this level of mind has two main functionsdeep 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. This 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 jivatman merges in the paramatman, the human soul merges in the Cosmic Soul, or Brahma. The 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, Patanjalis, Shivas and Krishnas ideas about yoga are not exactly the same. What is especially lacking in Patanjalis 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, ecological, pulsating organism. Thus, 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 animate and inanimate entity, is dancing according to the flow of that rasa, according to the vibrational expression of that rasa, writes Anandamurti.
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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. Thus, the Tantric yogi will attempt to make all ordinary tendencies spiritual, sacred, and flowing. Hence, the simple yet profound proclamation: I am That. I am one with That. 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 That, becomes. Here are some of the commonalities between the psychology of flow and the spiritual practice of yoga: Flow is concentrationas during meditation and asana practice Flow is increasing sophistication and challengeas during the practice of more advanced asana and meditation techniques Flow is unself-conscious behavioras during chanting and dancing in Bhakti Yoga, or during deep meditation, or simply right now! Flow is being in the present momentas during mantra/breath recitation while walking, biking, eating, loving
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And, there is another commonality between the yoga of union and Csikszentmihalyis 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: The sacred is in the ordinaryto be looking elsewhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignoranceeverything is miraculous. And when we feel that miraculous feeling, we practice the yoga of flow.
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Tantra and the Yoga Sutras: If Patanjali Had Been a Woman

If Patanjali had been a woman, he may have sounded a lot like Nischala Joy Devi. An internationally renowned yoga teacher, she is the author of The Secret Power of Yoga, a book in which she uncovers the heart and spirit of the Yoga Sutras. Devis translation of Patanjalis most famous sutrayogah 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. Devis warm, simple, and deeply personal translations are different from any I have read before. Ironically, they remind me of the liberal way Robert Blya very sweet but also a very manly mantranslates Rumi, Kabir, or Mirabai. Theres a personal directness, liberty, and freshness in each line that other translations lack. She writes that the above sutra, in which Patanjali explains the meaning of yoga, should be interpreted as follows: Yoga is the uniting of consciousness in the heart. Compare this to her male counterpart, Georg Feuersteins translation: Yoga is the restrictions of the fluctuation of consciousness. Devis 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. Feuersteins gives us a sense that yoga is a discipline to chastise the mind into submission. Feuersteins translation is indeed a lot closer to the literal meaning of Patanjalis words than Devis. Citta means mind, or consciousness. Vritti means tendency or fluctuation. Nirodha means restriction or suspension. There is really nothing about the heart or about unity in Patanjalis 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.
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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 heartand 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 Devis translation of Patanjalis Yoga Sutra 1.2 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. Heres another angle. The word citta, which is integral to understanding this sutra, is often translated as consciousness, but it really means mind. Our vrittis, our desires, our wants, our endless mental tendencies, 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 philosophyfor Patanjali was first and foremost a philosopherthe 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 bestselling book Shantaram, are all about the heart. They 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.
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A Comparative Examination of the Body-Mind-Spirit Connection

According to many spiritual 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. The 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 composed of five such sheaths. The first sheath is the annamaya kosha, the physical body. The second is the pranamaya kosha, or the sheath composed of life force. This is the connecting link between the physical body and the mind, the sphere of emotions. The third is the manomaya kosha, or the rational mind. Next comes the vijanamaya kosha, the sheath of intuition; the subtle mind. The fifth and last sheath is the anandamaya kosha, the deep, inner level of blissful transcendence. In Mahayana Buddhism, there are eight levels of consciousness. The first five represent the five senses. The next layer of the mind is based on sensory experience. The seventh layer, called manas, refers to both higher mind and the center of the illusion of the separate self. The 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 consciousnesshow the individual mind rests within and is part of the soul (atman). And, through an integral Body-MindSpirit 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. This model expands on the Vedantic version by dividing our individual Body-Mind-Spirit into seven levels, including its many sub-functions: 1. Annamaya Koshathe physical body, composed, as in Ayurveda,
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of the five elements: ether, air, fire, water, earth. The body is controlled by the first layer of mind, the kamamaya kosha. 2. Kamamaya Koshathis 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. This 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. 3. Manomaya Koshathe mental layer of mind. Also referred to in Jungian psychology as the subconscious mind. This 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. 4. Atimanasa Koshathe 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 kamamaya 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. 5. Vijinamaya Koshathe 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 issimply 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. This 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. 6. Hiranamaya Koshasubtle 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 practitioner from the Soul. A person in this unusual and sublime state of
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mind has approached the dawn of true awakening and experiences the all-pervading state of Cosmic Consciousness. 7. Atmanbeyond mind, the Soul, the Cosmic Consciousness. The 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: Through 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 perception were cleansed, man would see things as they really areinfinite. My own spiritual teacher, Anandamurti, notes that in order to experience this cosmic state of mind one must cleanse ones perception by converting the mind into a real mirror, every kosha has to be made transparent and crystalline.... But how? Through 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: Through the medium of kosha-wise meditation... the fuller the entire entity will become with divine radiance, with divine bliss. The 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 Gods... When this is done the soul will be illumined by and transformed in God. And God will so communicate his supernatural 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.
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Yoga and Reincarnation: To Believe or Not to Believe?

The belief in reincarnationthat souls migrate from life to life, body to bodyis not, as many believe, just a yogic, Buddhist and Eastern tradition. This doctrine has also been part of the Greek, neoplatonic 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 The idea of reincarnationthat our mind and its unexhausted karmic reactions keep assuming new bodies in order to fulfill its destiny until final enlightenmentwas 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, learning meditation, just like I am doing right now. It was not the dizzy and vague feeling of dj vu. It was a feeling of palpable certainty: I knew
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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. The origins of the notion of reincarnation appear in written form in the philosophical traditions of Greece from about the sixth century bce. During the Iron Age, the Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the Celtic Druids also taught a doctrine of reincarnation. The 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 historical, written records rather late, with the adaptation of ideas such as karma, samsara and moksha in the Upanishads (ca 700 bce) 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. The 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. They then ceased to do so by age seven or eight. The 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 childs birth. Stevenson collected over forty cases with physical evidence relating to birthmarks and birth defects of children,
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which he claimed matched wounds recorded in the medical or postmortem 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. These 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 complete sense to him. For months, before this fateful meeting with Helena, hed actually started to believe hed been Carl Heinrich von Stulpnagel in a previous life. Stulpnagel was a German general and a member of the July 20 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 30, 1944, 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
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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 Hitlers 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 reincarnation, 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, Patanjalis Aphorisms are worthless, writes William Q. Judge in his 1889 translation of the Yoga Sutras. Take No. 18, Book III, which declares that the ascetic can know what were his previous incarnations with all their circumstances; or No. 13, 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 8, Book IV, reincarnation is a necessity. But whether you believe youve 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.
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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: The 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. Then the body is recycled and becomes part of the earth. The mind is also recycled and becomes part of the cosmic sky-cycle of birth and rebirth.
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Your Mind Is More Powerful Than Your Brain

The grey, tofu-like substance of our brain is busy all day long firing off billions of neuron messages to thousands of neuron connectors. This 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 wont 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. The yogis are therefore scientists of both the exterior and interior realms. They noted down very systematically all their observations; and that is why we should listen to them, not just the Western material scientists. The yogis talk about objective and subjective reality. This 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. The 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
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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). The human being is thus like a banana flower: one layer envelopes the other, one layer subtler than the lastfirst 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. The 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. This 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 universeall the way down to atomic particles. Thus 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. The human mind has a unique, interior experience all of its own.
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This 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. These experiences are of a higher or deeper nature than that which we ordinarily encounter every day. They belong to the purely interior and subjective realm of the mind. But since material science is not equipped to understand the subjective or spiritual part of reality, it regards such experiences as unreal or something simply produced by the brain itself. The human brain and mind are constantly interacting. These two fine-tuned mechanisms are, according to yoga cosmology, integral expressionsone lower and one higher, one external and one internalof 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 minds whole is much larger, much broader in scope than the brain. Therefore the brain is enveloped by the mind, not the other way around. In the book The 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 brains physiology. They have proven that we canas in fact yogis have maintained for thousands of yearswill 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. The brain and the mind are also perfect examples of natures duality of Brahmas oneness, of the interlacing relationship between matter and Consciousness, between what Tantra calls Shiva (Consciousness) and Shakti (Energy/Matter). Throughout 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.
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Religion, Science, or Dharma: Whats the Difference?

The word religion comes 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. Throughout 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 thats not always the case. Religion has also been one of the most divisive and bloody forces on the planetthe source of many despicable 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 lets 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. Thus, at the heart of every authentic religion lies an understanding that there is an all-pervasive state of realityGod, Brahma, Taoand that this reality can be experienced within through the practice of yoga, meditation, prayer, chanting. The Kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17.21
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 levelsfrom 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.
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But unfortunately religion is not always the same as spirituality. Religion has often kept people away from the experience of spirituality. Thou 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. The Laws of Manu, Chapter 5 verse 156-161, 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 nevertheless riddled with myths and dogmas. That is, religions are often the opposite of spirituality. The Hindu Vedas, for example, contain some of humanitys 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 physical resurrection, and that creation was consummated in only six days. No wonder the exponents of science and rationality revolted against such illogical doctrines. That 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
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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! The rational can only approximate the transrational. Objective science can never fully explain subjective truth. Thats why even scientists resort to poetry, to myth, to explain certain objective truths. Thats 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 discovery that won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. 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. There is dynamic equilibrium. Thus his evocation of Shivas 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. The problem arises when we take the metaphorsthe virgin birth, the resurrection, the virgins in heaven, the flames of hell, the matter-is all-there-is, the-brain-is-all-there-is theoriesliterally. Thats 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. Theres 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? There is simply no other way to explain the unexplainable. The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science. Albert Einstein Benedictine monk and author David Stendl-Rast explains the importance of distinguishing between the essence of religion and its institution or dogmas: Religionshould be written with a capital R to distinguish it from the various religions. Translated into everyday
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living, Religion becomes spirituality; institutionalized it becomes a religion. The 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. The Sanskrit word dharma means an objects or a beings inner nature. In the context of humanitys search for perennial 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. Thus 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 contains 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.
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Yoga and Activism

A mysticism that 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 its 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 integral 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: The 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 unificationWe must have yoga in all the three levels of life. If there
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is yoga only in the spiritual level and there is no yoga in the psychic and physical level, what will happen? The 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. There 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. That 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 planets healthhow and where it was grown by farmers, animals and dirt. That 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? These are questions on the yogi/activists 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. The body and soul of those people living over there. But lets 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. They 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
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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. That act is part of the idea that samsara and nirvana are one, the idea that Shiva and Shakti are one in Brahma. The idea that what is above is also below. That is Tantra, that is yoga. That is what the yogic transformation enterprise is all about: to blend that which is within us with that which is outside us. That is the sacred and often complex and neglected enterprise of yoga. Yoga can mend ligaments, backs, heartsand 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? The yoga of a selfish, lonely, separated
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soul in the body of a sexy Lululemon ad? The yoga of a body-denying ascetic whose nails are too long to feed himself? It is no accident that religious enterprises which are about goingto-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. The 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 sacrednessin each and every moment of our lives. That, and nothing less, is the yoga of imperfect perfection, the yoga of enlightenment with both a small and capital E. That is the yoga of sacred activism.
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Can We be Spiritual without Transformation: A Tantric Perspective

Some people on the 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. Thus 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. This 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 polarities: 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 monkeyminds 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.
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By riding the energy of Shakti, the kundalini of transformation and creativity, we embrace Shiva, the Changeless. Tantra is the process of transforming ones latent divinity into Supreme Divinity. A person who, irrespective of caste, creed or religion aspires for [such] spiritual expansionis 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 changethe 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, destruction, 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 Shaktis nature to change form, to transform, but that Shiva always remains, formless and deeply whole within and beyond. We know that beyond duality there is nondualitythat 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
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the energy of Shakti, the energy of Prakriti, the energy of transformation 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 unitythe 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 heres the secret, the beauty of this transformation: by becoming more like the changeless, we can constantly undergo change more gracefully. 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 hurricane of our life.
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Three Ways to Practice Yoga

Do you practice yoga 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 primarily 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.) Patanjalis 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). This system, often termed Classical Yoga by Western yoga scholars, built upon much earlier forms of yoga, including Samkhya
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philosophy, Tantric (Shaiva) meditation practices, and also on Vedanta. The goal of yoga, said Patanjali, is not just to attain control of the body, but rather to tame the mind. The final spiritual goal of yoga, he said, is reached when the mind is free of thoughts, desires and needs. While Patanjalis 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. Shivas cosmic consciousness is inherent in everything, says Tantra in the body, in the soulwhile Shaktis cosmic energy is that which metaphorically takes Shiva by the hand and creates everything, the body and the soul. These 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 androgynous being; two dualistic sides of the nondual oneness of Brahma. And they were figuratively expressed in ancient art in the androgynous Ardhanarishvara statue. This 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 consciousness, there is energy. In Tantra, the goal of yoga is explicitly both Spirit-centered and bodycentered. 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 spiritual unionthe union between the human soul, or jivatman, and the Cosmic Soul, or paramatman. But thats 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. This 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
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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 medieval mystic Rumi is now a bestselling poet among yogis in America. These 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. This 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. This 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. The goal of yogas physical exercises in Tantra, for example, was to create a healthy body and mind and thus a conducive environment for spiritual practicefor meditation. The physical exercises are part of a nested continuum, from body to mind to spirit. Thats 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. The body is thus a springboard from which a self-inspired and sustainable 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. The 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
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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 bodynegative as many of todays 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. The physical realm of our existence is indeed limited. The 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 That. I am divine. Behind the sensuous gloss on the covers of todays 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 Krishnas 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. These 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-likeboth on and off the mat. As Rumi says, it is indeed important to know what you want. Because, says this wise poet of ecstasy: There is a subtle truth: whatever you love, you are.
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Three Ways to Enlightenment

In reality, there are 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 philosophys unique way to uncover the essence of yoga, which, according to Michael Stone, author of the insightful and very readable The 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 suffering, Tantra instructs us that the practice of yoga reveals feelings of joy, freedom, wholeness, bliss, love, awe, expansion, oneness. Krishnas 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 lifes goal is to end suffering, achieves enlightenment through detachment leading to transcendental absorption. This 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. They have much more in common than not.
Brief outline of three traditional paths of yogic enlightenment:

Patanjalis Yoga, or dvaita; traditionally considered a dualist school of yoga. Adi Shankaras Vedanta, or advaita; traditionally considered nondualist, or mayavada (the doctrine of illusion/only Brahma/God is real).
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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

The Classical Yoga of Patanjali is in traditional India also referred to as Patanjali Samkhya, Patanjali Tantra, or Raja Yoga. This is not accidental. When referred to as Samkhya, it is because Patanjalis Yoga Sutras follow and expand upon the tradition of the incredibly sophisticated philosophy of Kapilas Samkhya, which is also the philosophical foundation of Ayurveda, Indias yoga-based medical system. Hence, to deeply understand the principles of both Ayurveda and yoga, studying the detailed and logical cosmology of Samkhya philosophy is exceedingly instructive. Samkhya is also sometimes referred to as Kapilas 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 similarities. 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 Feuersteins The 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. The 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. These 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.
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This potpourri of ideas and practices spawned a plethora of philosophical 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:
Patanjalis Yoga Sutras

Patanjalis philosophy (approximately 200 BCE) recognizes the Self (Purusha) as a transcendental, all-pervading entity and as a state of mind actualized by a self-realized yogi. The opposite reality of the Self is the World (Prakrti) with all its numerous physical and mental manifestations. The yogis delusion according to Patanjali is the preoccupation with the world, the senses, the body, etc. Thus, 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. The 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 nonself; it is evidently not a yoga of union. This is how yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein reads him: Given Patanjalis 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. This 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 Patanjalis path gradually discover a deeper recognition of the inner Self, and eventually realizes, through skillful separation of
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truth from untruth, the nondual awareness of the transcendental reality. Hence, the path of duality, artfully practiced, leads to nonduality and enlightenment. This 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. The strength and beauty of Patanjalis 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. The 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 (concentration) and dhyana (focused flow) is thus essential in order to develop a daily, personal meditation practice.
Advaita Vedanta
Shankara, or Shankaracharya (approximately 800 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. Shankaras 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. Thomas 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 (18631902) we witness a modern exponent of Vedanta and simultaneously a
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teacher following the eight-fold path of Patanjalis 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. Shankaras 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 (1872-1950), 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 fruitful 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. The 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 Choprawho makes a point about not being a Hindu but rather a follower of Vedantasignifies 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. This 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 aspectsthe fire rituals, chanting, scriptural study, etcof 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 Shivaits alleged originator and King of Yogawere authored.
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According to Feuerstein, By unifying the mindthat is, by focusing itTantra 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. That is, Tantra seems to bridge the contradictions between Vedantas the-world-is-an-illusion theory with Patanajalis the-world-is-a-distraction 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 That, I am always unified with That. 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 opposites of Spirit and flesh are truly one in Brahma, truly two aspects of the same Transcendental Consciousness. Thus speaks Tantra. The 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. The 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

The 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. Thus 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
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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 lifes lessons do indeed become fleeting and illusory. The 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: The world is illusory; Brahma alone is real; Brahma is the world.
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What is Rajadhiraja Yoga?

Never heard of Rajadhiraja 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 youve heard of Raja YogaVivekananda and many other great yogis term for the Asthanga Yoga of Patanjaliyou are half way there. As you know, Raja Yoga means the Yoga of Kings, or the Royal Path. And Rajadhiraja Yoga simply means the Royals 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. Thats 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 transmutation 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 Patanjalis 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 its not that simple; at least not if you want to experience the full benefit of the practice.
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One will definitely benefit both mentally and spiritually by internalizing ones 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. There 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 positionssimply 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 physical, 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. Therefore 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
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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. This likely occurred some time before Patanjali (200 BCE). In other words, Rajadhiraja Yoga is at least 2200 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 Astavakras crippled body inspire us to overcome our own physical 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. The body and mind are thus vehicles to express and experience the Divine by transcending body-mind limitations as witnessed and experienced while in the womb of pure Sprit. This body-positive attitude is expressed in this passage from the Kularnava Tantra: For the purpose of attaining knowledge, the virtuous person preserves 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
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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 gifteda temple in which we may practice the silence of deep meditation, the translucent source of joy and peace in life.
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What the Bleep is Dharma?

Youve heard this hip, spiritual term thrown around by yogis for a while. Youve heard it thrown around by Buddhists the likes of Jack Kerouac, who wrote that ultimate hipster book The Dharma Bums. Youve likely even used it yourself. But what really is the inner, spiritual 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 pertaining to the teachings of the Buddha, or to Hinduism in the teachings of the Vedas. The Buddha, while completing his teachings, remarked, Esa dhamma sanantana; This is the eternal dharma. To live according to dharma, it is said, means to live according to ones religion, or to live according to universal law. But since religions differ in so many fundamental ways, how is it possible that my yoga dharmawhich I dont even think of as a religion but instead of as a spiritual pathcan be the same as your Buddhist dharma? Or even your Christian dharma? And does it really matter? Cant we just celebrate the diversity of religions, of our spiritual points of view? Cant 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 worsebetter than yoursthen were in deep trouble. And weve been in deep trouble for too long. When peoples religions, peoples 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 fundamentalist 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.
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Vivekananda, the first Indian yogi to come to the West, spoke about religious universalism. He said: The idea of an objective God is not untruein 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 Indias past, the Rig Veda, the worlds earliest sacred scripture stated: Ekam sat vipra bahauda vadanti, which means, to what is One, the sages give many names. In other words, theres only one common, universal, spiritual truth, which we approach in so many different ways and give so many different names. The Dalai Lama says that compassion is that which unites all religions; 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? The 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
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seek ultimate freedom, we seek the great dharma. The 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 different, 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! The 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 psychedelics and yoga, found enough common evidence among the worlds 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 lifes mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge. The trails converge because human nature, human dharma is the same: to satisfy our inner thirst for illumination. Thats why we pray, do yoga, meditate, chant, prostrate, breathe slowly through one nose at a time. Thats why we write love poetry to God all night. Thats why we dance and whirl as if were perfectly and wildly free. But not so fast you say. There 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 cleareyed 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, The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same.
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To which Prothero replies, This 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 promote 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

Like so many other spiritual seekers, I love the legendary little book by the famous, contemporary German-Canadian spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. But I love my daily meditation practice even more than the beautiful and wise words in Tolles book. Whats missing in Tolles 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 Tolles. The Power of Now we achieve while sitting in meditation is often incredibly blissful. For me, definitely more blissful than music, art, sexand definitely longer lasting. But not always. Because spiritual worksuch 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 soulis 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. The Sanskrit term for this is clusterfuck. What this wiseass Zen monk means is that meditationnot the listening-to-relaxing-music-kind, but the kind thats designed for spiritual transformationstirs things up. It often creates the perfect little teacup of a storm in your head and heart, where all the stuff youve been
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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 enlightenmentand 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 thats 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 experience 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. Then you may say to yourself, This is really all the yoga I need. But if you want more? Then you must face your lousy karma, or more philosophically correct, your lousy samskaras, head on. These 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 psychological 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
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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. This 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 psychological growth. Therefore its a good idea to combine cushion practice with mat practice. Its also a good idea to combine meditation with psychological 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: This 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 dont 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. This 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.
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The Yoga of Fierce Enlightenment

When I was living 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. The 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 familys dogma walked over his yoga and forced him to abide by medieval customs akin to slavery. These arcane and inhuman cultural customs, upheld by Vedic cultural injunctionsand even supported by most Indian yogisstill 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 husbands younger brother; throw themselves on their dead husbands 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
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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. This point is powerfully illustrated in the beautifully shot documentary Fierce Light by Velcro Ripper. In this film, a Dalit womana casteless person at the bottom of the Indian social pyramidtells the story of her people. She especially talks about the women, who are often beaten, raped, and enslaved by menbut without any consequence. All in the name of the Hindu caste system, which has been officially outlawed since Mahatma Gandhis 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 participation in Hindu social life. They may not enter a temple or a school, for example, and are often required to stay outside the village. This plight effects over 160 million people in India, about 1/7 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 revolutionary marriages. These 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 minimum wage. He talked about cosmic property as opposed to private property. He talked about the earth belonging to us allnot just all humans, but also to animals and plants. He called this concept neohumanismthe love for all beings. But spiritual teachers in India are not supposed to talk about such subversive topics, of course. They are supposed to sit peacefully counting the beads on their prayer malas. Not surprisingly, he upset many
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people in high and important places. Finally, in 1971, 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 1978, free of all charges. These attorneys called his trial politically motivated. Anandamurti, on the other hand, stated that he was only motivated by the love of justice and truth. This is an old, familiar story. The great sacred activist, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church in the year 1600 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 enlightenment. 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: The ritualistic differences in various religions are quite marked. By accentuating these differences, medieval and even contemporary people have not hesitated to cause heavy bloodshed. However, in spiritual sadhana, 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
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differences between the rituals and do not focus on the spiritual essence of our quest for truth, humanity will experience hatred, distrust, irrationality, 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 humanitys one religion. This 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: The 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 elses dogma cannot crush our dharma, because our spirituality, our yoga, is free. Dharma can outlive even the flames of the inquisition. Giordano Brunos quiet bravery of embracing both spirituality and science 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. The 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? The 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 writing, twenty-two years after his death, his work is regularly featured in
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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.
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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. Those 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: 1. 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. 2. Systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. 3. Any of the branches of natural or physical science. 4. Systematized knowledge in general. 5. Knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study. 6. A particular branch of knowledge. 7. Skill, esp. reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency. The 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 experimentation. Indeed, this is what distinguishes yoga from being a religion, a dogma, a belief system, because over thousands of years, yogis observed
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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. These 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. These 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. They 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. Through the scientific 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. The 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 rational, 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: 5) Knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study; 6) a particular branch of knowledge; 7) 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.
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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 developed 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. The fact is, you can hail from any religion and still practice yoga. No problem. Why? As I demonstrated initially, yoga is more a science and an art than a religion. Yoga is an empirical path of body-mind-spirit transformation. Its that simple. Some people who only practice Hatha Yoga believe that the rest of yogathe philosophy, the chakras, the meditation, the Ayurvedic stuffis 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). The karmakanda teachings are the oldest portions of the Vedas, and they contain rituals and prayers to appease the gods, request a good harvest, etc. These rituals are the yajinas, or sacrificesincluding animal sacrificesof the Vedic priests, and they are found in the four Vedas of ancient times. The jinanakanda portion, or the philosophical writings of the Vedas, are the deeply yogic scriptures found in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahmanas. These Vedic scriptures are more recent (700 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
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yoga, belongs to the oral teachings of the yogis and the Tantrics, and these oral teachings originated thousands of years earlier. The 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. The 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. This 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. That 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.
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Yoga: Multiple Pathways to the Path of One!

Is this headline a contradiction, a misunderstanding, a philosophically 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 transcendent mental outlook, and in its inclusive spirituality. Yoga is bodycentered, mind-expanding, and spiritually uplifting. Yoga is yes/and. For Patanjali, yoga was a deep methodology of personal transformation, which, in its purest essence transcends both religion and dogma. Thus, you will find hashish-smoking sadhus in India, deeply steeped in religious tradition, reciting Patanjalis 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 Patanjalis sacred texts. His work was much too philosophical for that. Ecstatic yogis include the medieval poet iconoclasts Kabir and Mirabai. The fearless Kabir stepped on religious dogma as if dusty dirt under his naked feet. Beyond convention, he embraced both Islam and Hinduism. Thus, 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 yogisthey 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 Bhaktiwhen lover and
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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 lifes 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. They 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. Their 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. They 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 thatand 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. That 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 methodologya 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
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awareness with the deeper recesses of our mind. Our awareness expands. The 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 energize 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. The yogi will then experience unity beyond technique, a sense of spiritual oneness and deep peace. The 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. The 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. That is also yoga. This is quite a different path from Bikrams, 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?
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Some insist that deep, meditative experiences can be as easily induced while doing asanas or bike riding. They 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. There are levels of interior transcendence, just as there are levels of proficiency in doing asanas. There are levels of depth, levels of intensity in our inner experiences. There 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. These results are achieved by following 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. The 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 focusdaily and intenselywith 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!) The 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.
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Bhakti Yoga: the Cure for Spiritual Heart Disease

In the great tradition 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 embodiment 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 That keeps coming. But how do we find That in our life? How do we experience That in others and in nature? As Rainer Maria Rilkearguably one of the greatest poets to be born on Western soilwrote in The 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 That. Through loving praise for the existence of That in all others, we can connect with the spiritual heart of everybody around us. Through an all-embracing awe of the presence of That in nature, we can celebrate the oneness of creation. That is Bhakti Yoga, the perennial cure for the aching emptiness we sometimes feel inside. The great sages have always reminded us of the importance of Bhakti, of love for the Divine. Their 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. This kind of transformation is exactly what our self-obsessed and narcissistic Western world needs. Despite our many technological
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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 aweinspiring places. Praise your family and friends as manifestations of the Divine. Eat and drink as if your meal is divine nectar. The 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 material, mental and spiritual realms. To love and live the dance of opposites as if all is One. That 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.
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Diet for a Yogi Planet

Ask any number of yogis to describe their diets and youll 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 themand 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. The 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 traditionally been practiced for ethical and spiritual reasons, secondarily for physical health and well-being. Even though many yogis today claim otherwise, asanas were traditionally 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 (200 bce), 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 Patanjalis teachings, had been in existence in India for thousands of years, from the beginning of yogas long and illustrious history. If we carefully read Svatmaramas work, we will notice how his treatise incorporated ideas from the much earlier Yoga Sutras, the Yoga Upanishads, the Puranas, the Bhagavad Gita and even older scriptures.
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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. That 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. Therefore there should be no surprise that the yogic canon, the Bhagavad Gita, is pretty straightforward about what yogis should eat. This 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. The Bhagavad Gita Some scholars, however, point to the early Vedic peoples and their cultures lust for animal sacrificestherefore, 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. The nomadic Vedic people were hunters and herders who imported their sacrificial practices from outside India. When they arrived around 5000 bce, the Indians already practiced yoga, grew rice and dwelled in urban cities, such as Mehrgarh (7000 bce), 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 40005000 bce, 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 independently of the Vedic tradition, it had advanced its own peculiar
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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 worlds 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. The Buddha and his friend Mahavirathe founder of the Jain religion, in which ahimsa, or nonviolence, is the cornerstonewere 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 enlightenment. 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
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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 experience, Patanjali had an easy way of convincing me that ahimsa makes total yogic sense. The 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 interdependent 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
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killing should we enlightened human yogis allow ourselves? A cow or a carrot? The 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 unthinkable 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 slaughterhousethen make up your mind!
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Why do People Chant OM at the End of Yoga Class?

Of the many names for God, OM is most likely the oldest and one of the most widely used throughout Indian history. OMs significance as a sacred syllable in Indian spiritual culture is illustrated by this simple story. There was once a sadhu who owned nothing but a water pot and a book. Every day, he would worship the book with offerings of flowers, 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. The sadhu explained: Whats 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. The sacred sound OM is commonly understood in Tantra as the cosmic sound vibration that originates, maintains and reabsorbs everything 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. These root sounds again
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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. Thats why Sanskrit is a profoundly spiritual language. The sonic vibrations and combination of letters in the Sanskrit mantras harmonize our chakras and link our own individual vibration to the vibration of the cosmos. Thats the sacred reason for the great spiritual vibrations generated when chanting Sanskrit mantras during kirtan! And thats 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. The 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, preservation 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. There 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
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M by closing the lips. Hence, that is how AUM, or OM, yogas 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. The 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 mans divinity within himself.
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Why do Modern Yogis Believe Brahmacarya Means Celibacy?

The term for mindfulness in Sanskrit is smrtito 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. Thus 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. This form of meditation has the capacity to take us into a deeper state of silence and spiritual depth than mere mindfulness. And, when remembering, when having attained continuous mindfulness one attains dhruva smrti; that is, one experiences continuous remembering. Remembering what? The remembering that all objects of ones 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? The literal meaning of brahmacarya is to remain attached to Brahma. The 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
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infused in peoples 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. The 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 benefits 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. That is the Tantric interpretation and also the literal meaning of these Sanskrit words. I think its time modern yogis start embracing the deeply spiritual meaning of this word from our Tantric heritage.
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Yoga May Be Bad For Your Health: Seven Ways to Avoid Yoga Injuries
A friend of mine 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 practices 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-toBig-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: 1. Easy does it. Practice yoga gently, especially in the beginning, and in coordination with the breath. The 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. These 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.
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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. 2. Combine yoga with a meditation practice. Yoga postures are of two kinds: 1. those primarily for physical and mental health and secondarily for spiritual elevation, and 2. those primarily for spiritual elevation. Hence, many yoga postures were clearly not just designed for the body. They 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). 3. 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. 4. Yoga is not a competitive sport. Besidesshowing off may not just increase your ego, it may lead to injury. Serious injury. Heres some sage advice from Carol Krucoff: I learned the hard way that there is no place for showing off in yoga. So, dont 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 chiropractors office. 5. Pick an experienced teacher. Yogas popularity has resulted in a shortage of experienced teachers and sometimes teachers with inadequate 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 combinationnew student and inexperienced teacheris one of the leading causes of injury-overzealousness. 6. Know the weakest links. The 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 headstand the first time you practice yoga is definitely not advisable! 7. Accidents do happen. A few years ago, I tore my meniscus while falling sideways in the bed of my friends pick-up truck when it jerked into motion.
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For a long time, I had pain in my meniscus when I sat in meditation. Too immersed in my mind and spirit, I did not listen to my body. Then suddenly one day bending down to pick something up from the floor, my knee went out. The pain was excruciating, and the healing process took a painstakingly long time. For nearly two years, I was unable to perform my asana postures properly 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 remember, you are not doing yoga for anybody but your own body, mind and soul.
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You Are Already Enlightened! True or False?

You have heard it 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, its all the same. Samsara or nirvanaits all the same enlightened breath. No matter what, you have always been in an everpresent 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 tendencies to impart to the students some secret teachings beyond their rational understanding. The 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 boundaries. Hence, when some teachers leave a trail of wounded women and
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generally confused students in their wake, it is difficult to vouch for their enlightened behavior. Then 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. Then 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 classical 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). Then 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 lovehearts 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. There 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 allall 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 everpresent 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.
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According to the yoga scriptures, we require only three practices to arrive in that enlightened state: chanting the name of the Divine; thinking of the Divine, meditating on the Divine. Its that easy. They all say its 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 longing 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 everyones 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 The 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 Tolles book thinking that we will soon arrive at enlightenment 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. Its intensely and radically different. Just think Nisargadatta Maharaj. To be able to speak the words of wisdom in that 550-page masterpiece of a book, I Am That, 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):
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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 youGo 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. There 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. Therefore its no longer instant; its 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 That is, the sages walk into deaths 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, its 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. Its the same as being unconscious. Unaware. And enlightenment is the oppositeit 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. The 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
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Enlightenment is such a fiercely one-pointed state of mind that Ramana Maharishi was completely oblivious to the world for long periods of time. That 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. Thinking we have arrived is being caught in a subtle intellectual game of make-believethe mind thinking it is what it is not. And enlightenment 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: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions, Lex Hixon describes Ramana Maharishi as a person who achieved natural enlightenment; someone who after several neardeath 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 consciousness 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 articulation, [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. The sleepiness that overwhelms us in this attempt is distraction from the source of awareness by the various objects or structures of awareness. This 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. That is, all spiritual practice aiming at enlightenment involves an intensity 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 seekers 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. That 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
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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 instantlyyou 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
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Ten Simple Secrets to a Great Meditation Practice

1. 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. 2. 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 insulator 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 spacethree to four square feet in a corner is sufficient. By doing your daily meditation there, you will gradually create a strong, spiritual vibration, so that merely sitting there will elevate your mind. 3. 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. 4. 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
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naturally become slower and deeper. This will gradually induce a deeper and deeper state of calm, concentration and bliss. 5.Sacred books, sacred spirit. Maintain spiritual flow by reading spiritual books daily. 6. 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. 7.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! 8.Lonely space, silent mind. Perform meditation in a quiet and lonely place in the forest, mountains or by the ocean on a regular basis. 9. 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. 10. 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!) The gradual flexing of the body that takes place during asanas helps greatly in sitting motionlessly in meditation for longer periods.
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Twelve Ways to Meditate Like a (Real) Yogi

Why do so few 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. The meditation techniques integral to the eight limbs of Patanjalis Asthanga Yoga are still largely taught personally by a guru and for free in the old Tantric fashion. That 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. This list is not an instruction manual, but it gives you an idea of how they are practiced and what some of their benefits are. 1) Sadhana: a general Sanskrit term for spiritual practice or meditation. 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. 2) Dhyan Mantra: A Sanskrit verse listing the attributes of a deity and used to visualize that deity in meditation. 3) 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.
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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. 4) Pratyahara: a yogic practice of withdrawing the mind from the physical senses and the mind itself in order to experience deep concentration 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. 5) 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. 6) Dhyan: advanced meditation; meditation on Supreme Consciousness/God/Spirit; unbroken flow of mind moving toward union with Supreme Consciousness/God/Spirit. This practice is also common in Buddhist Tantra and is the seventh limb of Asthanga Yoga. 7) Chakra Niyantrana: a specific meditation technique used to control the chakras. 8) Chakra Shodana: a specific meditation technique used to purify the various chakras. 9) 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. 10) Madhya Sadhana: a system of Tantric meditation used to stimulate the production of amrita, an intoxicating hormone from the pineal gland. 11) Maethuna Sadhana: a system of Tantric meditation to control the kundalini energy. 12) 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.
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The five limbs of Asthanga Yoga mentioned above represents various forms of yogic or Tantric meditations. The three remaining limbs of Asthanga Yoga are 1) Yama (social ethics), 2) Niyama (personal and social ethics) and 3) Asanas (physical postures, or Hatha Yoga, for health, well-being and meditation).
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Why are People Afraid of the Tantric Guru?

To many spiritual seekers 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.
The Guru in Yoga

Throughout the history of yoga, however, the authentic guru has often been regarded as an essential spiritual guide. In yoga, the genuine spiritual 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. Throughout human history, there have lived but a few such illuminated beings, such God-like humans in flesh and blood, whose teachings resonate with the perennial wisdom of all sages of the past. These 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 darkness, 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. The 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 naparahthe guru is none other than Brahma,
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no one else. In other words, your gurus 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. Thus, the manifestation of the physical, historical guru is an indispensable 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?

There 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 masters teachings and extraordinary state of consciousness. When Rumis 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. There 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: 1. There 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 unconditional veneration bestowed upon them.
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2. 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. 3. 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 mahagurus are walking gods and goddesses whose consciousness is a door always flung open into infinite awareness. 4. In Tantra, there is the concept of Taraka Brahmawhich 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 Shivas 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 1960s, do not qualify as mahagurus. Most of them are not even qualified to earn the title guru, because they are mostly teachers 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 written off as crazy wisdom. That is, one is told the teacher is enlightened
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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 students 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 groups or the teachers 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. This dilemma can be resolved by, first of all, recognizing that, irrespective of the teachers 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. These 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. The 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 teachers 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. The Dalai Lamas reply was profound and unmistakable: Ones view may be as vast as the sky, he said, but ones regard for cause and effect should be as finely sifted as barley flour.
The 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
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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. Through devotional visualization, the gurus form is embraced in the devotees heart and mind. Thus visualized, the gurus 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. The gurus 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 Harveys 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 evaluated 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.
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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 philosophy, there is consciousness even in the so-called inanimate world of rocks. This 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. Thus, according to Tantric yoga philosopher Anandamurtis worldviewwhose ideas have combined yoga philosophy with an evolutionary understanding of the world we live inwe 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
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nature. This differentiation is crucialand 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 difference 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 understand 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 underdeveloped consciousness, a yogi must consider deeply if it is possible to live a healthy life without taking such lives. Thus, in addition to existential value, various beings, based on their depth of consciousness, have a variable degree of what is often termed intrinsic value. The 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 dont eat my friends.
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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. These 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. The other ninety percent goes literally down the drain. In addition to existential value and intrinsic value, all beings have utility value. Throughout 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 forests 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. This 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 conservation 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.
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Tantric Ethics for Self and Society

As the proverb goes, 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. The practice of Tantra embraces all aspects of our lives, and so our ethicsour guiding principles of conductare seen as essential stepping stones toward spiritual growth. The guidelines below are thousands of years old. They 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 7000 years ago. As scripture, they were first mentioned in the Tantric-inspired Puranas thousands of years ago, then in Patanjalis Yoga Sutras. Since then, they have become an integral part of yoga practice. Those 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.
Yamasacts of integrity:
1. Ahimsathe least harm possible. The 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 Gandhis non-violence movement, this yogic decree is actually not a principle of absolute nonviolence, 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.
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2. Satyahonesty. Practicing Satya is to speak truth with a spirit of kindness. 3. Asteyanot stealing. On the face of it, Asteya seems like a simple principledo 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? 4. Brahmacaryafollow 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. 5. Aparigrahasimplicity. While Brahmacarya inspires our subjective 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.
Niyamashealthy practices.
These principles help us build a lifestyle that supports the values of Yama. They are steps we can take to make our lives richer and more sacred. 1. Shaocaclarity. Often termed cleanliness, Tantric yogis define Shaoca as clarity instead, because it also refers to such values as being clear, simple, and direct. 2. Santosamental 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. 3. Tapahgiving of ourselves. When we practice Tapah, we are willing 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
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to help someone in need. Ultimately, Tapah means to truly serve the other as we would like to be served in return. 4. Svadhyayaspiritual understanding. Understanding the spiritual gems hidden deep in the scriptures is a genuine, spiritual practice. Hence, we read and contemplate sacred scriptures every day. 5. Ishvara Pranidhanaspiritual practice. The literal meaning is to take shelter in the Supreme Being. In Tantra, spirituality is both a practice 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. The 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 guidelineswhich are interpreted here from a Tantric perspectivecan be applied in daily life, while we face all the contemporary issues and challenges related to relationships, parenting, community, ecology, politics, economics, etc.
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The Power of Mantras

All mantras are words, 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. This 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. They 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. This primal force of nature literally kick-started his kundalini Shakti and united him with her cosmic consort Shiva in an accelerated and exhilarated 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 persons 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?
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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. The 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. There 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. The 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: 1) to use a proper siddha mantra, empowered by a legitimate guru, 2) to know and meditate on the exact inner meaning of the mantra and 3) 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.
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Tantra Practice: Three Steps to Meaningful Mindfulness Meditation

Many teachers of Buddhism 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. The term for mindfulness in Sanskrit is smrtito 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. Thus 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. This form of meditation has the capacity to take us into a deeper state of silence and spiritual depth than mere mindfulness. And, when remembering, when having attained continuous mindfulness one attains dhruva smrti; that is, one experiences continuous remembering. Remembering what? The remembering that all objects of ones 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. This 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. There is no differentiation, only One without a second. On a metaphysical
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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 integration 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 integrate 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 Through 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 everything, 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. Thus, 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
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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. The more you remember doing this, the more you will become connected to the world around you in a deeply spiritual and sacred way. This is madhuvidya, or honey knowledge, the remembering that everything is divine honey. Everything. This 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 remembering 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. Then imbue the breath with meaningful 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. This is easier said than practiced, of course, but the habit of sitting every day, twice a day, then doing japa during the day, remembering 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,
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your longing for That, 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.
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Introducing a Meditation Practice

In the tradition of 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. Thus the literal name of the mantra is Only the name of the Beloved. This mantra can be used as a beginners 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 15 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
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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 attention, 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
Anandamurti, Shrii Shrii, Discourses on Tantra, Volume Two, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1994 Brooks, Douglas, from an interview on the blog Shivers Up the Spine with Priya Thomas, 2011 Feuerstein, Georg, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, Shambala, Boston, 1998 Isaacs, Nora, Tantra Rising, article in Yoga Journal, June, 2006 McClure, Vimala, A Womans Guide to Tantra Yoga, New World Library, 2012 Satyananda, Swami, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya, Yoga Publications Trust, Bihar, 1981 Singh, Lalan Prasad, Tantra: Its Mystic and Scientific Basis, Concept Publishing Company, 1976 Wells, Spencer, Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Random House, New York, 2004
Part One Sacred Rivers: The History of Yoga and Tantra

Anandamurti, Shrii Shrii, Discourses on Tantra, Volume Two, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1994 Anandamurti, Shrii Shrii, Namah Shiva Shantaya, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1999 Abhayananda, Swami, History of Mysticism, Atma Books, Olympia, 1996 Bhattacharyya, N. N., History of the Tantric Religion, Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 1999 Cooke, Robert, article titled History of Aryan Conquest of India told in Genes, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 May, 1999
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Danielou, Alain, A Brief History of India, Inner Traditions, Vermont, 2003 Feuerstein, Georg, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, Shambala, Boston, 1998 Feuerstein, Georg, et al, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Quest Books, 2001 Frawley, David, Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses, Lotus Press, 1994 Kumar, Arvind, Women and the Vedas: Limiting Women Limits All of Society, article in India Currents, September, 1994 Muller, Max, The Veda: Chips from a German Workshop, Volume One, New York, Charles Scribner, 1900 Satyananda, Swami, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya, Yoga Publications Trust, Bihar, 1981 Singleton, Mark, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010 Singh, Lalan Prasad, Tantra: Its Mystic and Scientific Basis, Concept Publishing Company, 1976 Samuel Jeffrey, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religion to the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2008 Wells, Spencer, Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Random House, New York, 2004
Part Two Tantra: The Path of Love and Ecstasy

Anandamurti, Shrii Shrii, Discourses on Tantra, Volume One, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1994 Anandamitra, Acarya, A Commentary on Ananda Sutram: The Spiritual Philosophy of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, Ananda Marga Publications, 1991 Bly, Robert, The Kabir Book: 44 Ecstatic Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1991 Bly, Robert, The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems From Many Cultures, Ecco, 1999 Bly, Robert and Hirshfield, Jane, Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 2009 Danielou, Alain, Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus, Inner Traditions, 1991 Feuerstein, Georg, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, Shambala, Boston, 1998
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Nisargadatta, Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Acorn Press, 1990 Yeshe, Lama, Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire, Wisdom Publications, 2001
Part Three The Wisdom of Yoga: The Psychology and Philosophy of Tantra
Anandamurti, Shrii Shrii, Discourses on Tantra, Volume One, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1994 Anandamurti, Shrii Shrii, Yoga Sadhana, Ananda Marga Publications, Kolkata, 2011 Anandamitra, Acarya, A Commentary on Ananda Sutram: The Spiritual Philosophy of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, Ananda Marga Publications, 1991 Buhler, Georg, The Laws of Manu, Nabu Press, 2010 Caird, John, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Kessinger Publishing, 2006 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihali, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008 Cross, St. John, Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, ICS Publications, 1991 Devi Joy, Nischala, The Secret Power of Yoga: A Womans Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras, Three Rivers Press, 2007 Feuerstein, Georg, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice, Hohm Press, 2008 Feuerstein, Georg, The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation and Commentary, Inner Traditions, 1989 Harvey, Andrew, see: http://www.andrewharvey.net/vision.php Judge, William, The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, Theophana Publishing, 2011 McClure, Vimala, A Womans Guide to Tantra Yoga, New World Library, 2012 Mitchell, Stephen, Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation, Three Rivers Press, 2002 Nikhilananda, Swami, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, RamakrishnaVivekananda Center, 1985 Stevenson, Ian, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, Praeger, 1997
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Schwartz, Jeffrey, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, Harper Perennial, 2003 Walz, Bill, Consciousness Column, article titled Psycho-Spiritual Healing, Rapid River Magazine, Asheville, May, 2011
Part Four The Spirit of Practice: Yoga and Tantra in Daily Life
Anandamurti, Shrii, Shrii, Ananda Marga Philosophy in a Nutshell, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1991 Barks, Coleman, The Essential Rumi, HarperOne, 2004 Barret, Jennifer, The Roots of Vegetarianism, article in Yoga Journal, 2010 Bly, Robert, The Kabir Book: 44 Ecstatic Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1991 Gannon, Sharon, Yoga and Vegetarianism, Mandala Publishing, 2008 Iyengar, B. K. S., Light on Yoga, Shocken, 1995 Hixon, Lex, Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions, Larson Publications, 1995 Nabhaniilananda, Dada, Close Your Eyes and Open Your Mind: An Introduction to Meditation, InnerWorld Publications, 2006 Tolle, Eckhart, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, 2004 Wilber, Ken, A Brief History of Everything, Shambhala, 2001
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Acknowledgments
The initial writings of this book began with a virtual meeting of the minds. In the spring of 2010, 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. This 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 journals website. I am honored to have been part of Elephants yoga writing crew and the websites exploding growth from its humble beginnings during that time when Waylon was not sure if hed 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. These 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 hearts 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 1974. For more information about Ramesh and his work, please visit: www.eightfold-path.com.

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Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit

A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of Yoga and Tantra

By The Same Author

Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit

Part One: Sacred Rivers: The History of Yoga and Tantra

Part Two: The Path of Love and Ecstasy

Part Three: The Wisdom of Yoga

Part Four: The Spirit of Practice

sacred body, sacred spirit

A Brief Introduction to Tantra Philosophy

sacred body, sacred spirit

The Books Title

sacred body, sacred spirit

The Use of Sanskrit

Brief History of the Yoga and Tantra Tradition

sacred body, sacred spirit

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

sacred body, sacred spirit

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

sacred body, sacred spirit

Three Ways to View the Ancient History of Yoga

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

sacred body, sacred spirit

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

5000 BCETantra Systematized by Shiva

50002000 BCETantra-oriented Civilizations in India

sacred body, sacred spirit

2000 BCETransformation of the Original Shiva Tantra

1500 BCEKrishna and Samkhya

700300 BCEThe Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

4001200 CETantra Shastras

600 CEAge of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Tantra

800 CEYoga Vashista

900 CEAbhinava Gupta

1000 CEKularnava Tantra

sacred body, sacred spirit

1000-1200 CEThe Nathas Develop Hatha Yoga

1100 CEMahanirvana Tantra

13001700 CEYogic Scriptures

1500 CECaetanya Mahaprabhu

15002000 CE Tantra Influences Many Spiritual Teachers and Paths

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

1914 CEJohn Woodroffe

19002010 CEKrishnamacarya and others

sacred body, sacred spirit

Before Buddha was a Buddhist, He was a Tantric Yogi

Buddha and the Tantric Mystics

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

Buddha, Tantra and the Vedic Priesthood

sacred body, sacred spirit

Buddha and the Yogis

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

Buddha, Tantra and Enlightenment

sacred body, sacred spirit

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

How Old Is Your Yoga Practice?

sacred body, sacred spirit

sacred rivers: the history of yoga and tantra

sacred body, sacred spirit

Part One: Sacred Rivers: The History of Yoga and Tantra

Part Two: The Path of Love and Ecstasy

Part Three: The Wisdom of Yoga

Part Four: The Spirit of Practice