The Healing Power of Mantra

Mantras were discovered in higher states of meditation, when

yogis started to explore the different layers of the mind to

discover the source of existence. As they went deeper into their

own nature, they started seeing themselves in a different way. We

see ourselves as composed of matter, we identify with the body.

But within this sthoola, gross body, there is also the sukshma,

subtle body. The extensions of the subtle body are manas, buddhi,

chitta and ahamkara through which we are able to experience the

attributes of the mind and interact with the world of sense objects.

Underneath the subtle body is karana sharira, the causal body, the

dimension of the spirit. – Swami Niranjanananda Saraswasti

Mantras are “tools” with which we can work with the mind.  Ordinarily when people try to meditate they find that their mind is full of chaos and confusion.  Instead us using our minds, we generally experience ourselves as being controlled by our subconscious.  There is a great yogic saying, “the mind is a great servant but a terrible master.”  How can we control the frenetic energy of the mind?  The answer is by relaxing and letting go of our ordinary obsessions, desire-fantasies and negativity.  The mind is a tremendous power within us which we can use for better or worse.  The mind can heal but it can also kill us.

When we are fixated on the superficial level of our material existence we tend to ignore what is happening within our minds.  We are engrossed if “life” as we believe it to be without understanding that our life experience is the product of our minds.  Or, if you prefer, it is the result of the interaction between mind and matter.  Quantum mechanics has shown that there is a direct link between mind and matter.  Our minds interact with a field of probability to produce a material outcome.  However, when our mind is stuck in repetitive patterns (samskaras) we are not able to consciously and freely determine anything.

“Change your thinking and you can change your life.” is the central axiom of the New Thought movement and it is quite correct.  However we need another approach which involves looking within and examining the unconscious thoughts and beliefs that drive us.  The world is currently struggling to “awaken from the nightmare of history,” as James Joyce put it.  We can only do it by releasing all of the karmic conditioning of the past and opening ourselves to new possibilities, new beliefs. 

Mantra practice is a powerful tool for realizing this possibility.  The Sanskrit term “mantra” means “a tool, or method, for liberating the mind.”  It does so through the power of spiritual sound vibration.  Language, or speech, both controls and expresses the mind.  However language is based in pure sound vibration.  Mantra dissolves language and thought back to its true state of pure vibration.  It allows us to release the superficial meanings of words and to reconnect with the power within.  Mantras take us deeper within ourselves; beyond the physical manifestation, beyond our compulsive belief systems and into the potentiality of our inner beings.

Mantra practice allows us to enter into the true state of meditation, awareness beyond thought.  Sometimes when my computer is malfunctioning I simply need to reboot it to fix the problem.  Mantra japa (recitation) is a way of rebooting and reprogramming the mind.

Total Yoga

What makes one a terrorist and what makes one a good person?

It is the mind. The mind can be a saint and the mind can be a

sinner, and it is that mind which has to be dealt with. As a system

of mind management, yoga helps to change and transform the

hyper agitated mind and make it more peaceful and content. In

the beginning we come to yoga to deal with our mind, to deal with

tension, frustration and anxiety, to learn how to relax and let go.

Eventually, as our involvement with yoga increases, we come to

know the other dimensions and aspects of yoga, but originally the

effort is to understand the mind.  – Paramhamsa Niranjan Ananda

In some recent posts I may have seemed to disparage the physical practices of yoga, the yoga asanas.  In fact, I try to practice asanas daily and encourage anyone to do so.  Asanas benefit us on physical, psychological and spiritual levels in terms of health and development.  When practiced properly, i.e. mindfully, asanas are a form of meditation and help us to integrate these three aspects of our beings (physical, psychological and spiritual.)  As Alex Korb, Ph.D. writes, “Yoga can supposedly improve depressive symptoms and immune function, as well as decrease chronic pain, reduce stress, and lower blood pressure.  These claims have all been made by yogis over the years, and it sounds like a lot of new age foolishness. Surprisingly, however, everything in that list is supported by scientific research.”  (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prefrontal-nudity/201109/yoga-changing-the-brains-stressful-habits)

What I have criticized is the tendency of our culture to adopt only the most superficial aspects of yoga, to focus exclusively on the physical asanas and to lose the deeper spiritual-philosophical basis.  You don’t have convert to a new religion to practice yoga but it helps to develop a flexibility of mind as well as body.  Soul and spirit are legitimate aspects of our beings just as are body and mind.  Yoga enables us to become more aware of these dimensions of our beings.

Asana practice is a good place for most of us to begin.  We are more or less identified with our bodies, or as Dr. Freud put it, “The ego is first and foremost a body ego.”  Our histories of attachment, stress, conflict, abuse and trauma are all held in the muscular tension of our bodies.  Yoga helps us to become aware of the energetic aspect of our beings, to release psycho-physical “knots,” and to balance the polar energies of prana (bio-energy) and chitta (mind-energy.)  I won’t go so far as to say that it is a complete substitute for psychotherapy.  The therapeutic relationship is sometimes necessary for us to heal.  However it is a powerful adjunct to “talk-therapy.” 

When I first began to learn yoga under the tutelage of Swami Niranjan, he asked me what I wanted to learn about yoga.  I told him I was interested in meditation.  Coming from a background which I now identify as a “domestic violence family,” I was struggling with moodswings and anxiety and hoped to transcend them through meditation.  He simply told me, “You need to learn asana and pranayama before you will be able to experience meditation.”  However, even my first yoga class included asana (postures,) pranayama (breath work,) and introductory meditation practices (i.e. yoga nidra.) 

I learned that yoga is an integral practice.  It is not just physical exercise, nor is it just relaxation.  On a deeper level it is a discipline to develop consciousness.  It is a means of awakening to who we are beyond the physical body and the conditioned mind.  As Swami Shiva Radha put it, “Yoga means dehypnotizing and waking up.”  It is most deeply a discipline of awareness.  It is sometimes easy to miss this and to let yoga become “yuppie calisthenics.”  As Dr. Korb (ibid.) says, “After going back to my Dad's yoga class a few times, I eventually came to the realization that not only can you practice yoga in real life, but, conversely, you could go to a yoga class and not really be doing yoga.  Some of those hot, tan, thin women around him might just be placing their legs behind their heads, and still not be focusing on keeping their breath calm and steady, or their minds clear (Note: I have removed a lame blonde joke).  They might be focused on something else entirely.  Without the sustained intention of focusing on the present, and calming the mind, going to a yoga class is literally just going through the motions.”

Beyond yoga class, Swamiji taught me that yoga is a discipline that carries over into our daily lives.  Most notably is the practice of karma yoga or mindful activity.  Karma yoga means being aware of ourselves in the midst of our activities, letting go of past impressions, future imaginings and simply being “here-and-now” in our work responsibilities.  Karma yoga is mindfulness-in-action.  Along with this is Bhakti yoga or the cultivation and maintenance of love, devotion and surrender in our lives and Jnana yoga, philosophical self-inquiry.  When we put all of these together we begin to truly and fully practice yoga.  

Bikram and Ethical Yoga

By God’s grace one is born as a human being. Try to make the best of this opportunity.

~ Sri Anandamayi Ma

There is a story I heard somewhere of a spiritual hermit who lived in the woods far from the mental contagion of human society.  He lived out in a forest and even went so far as to build a shelter in a tree where he could meditate without being interrupted.  Nonetheless local people discovered him, learned of his wisdom and would come out from time to time to ask him questions about life.  Eventually the local governor heard of his existence and decided that he needed to impress his subjects by going through the motions of consulting this crazy person. 

He arrived on site accompanied by his retinue and proceeded to address the holy hermit.  He called up, “I have heard of your great wisdom and have come to seek your guidance.”

After a pause the hermit answered, “What is your question?”

The governor was nonplussed.  He was used receiving information without questioning, following the rules as modeled by his peers and most basically, never questioning anything.  He had to think for a minute.  Finally he replied, “How can I find enlightenment?”

The hermit replied, “Be kind and do no harm.” 

The governor replied, “That’s it?  That is the extent of your wisdom?  I was taught that as a child.”

“Easy to say,” replied the hermit, “but hard to practice.”

Yoga is essentially a spiritual discipline.  It is not a religious discipline although it can be incorporated to the benefit of any religious tradition.  It is a holistic and integrative discipline, something hard to grasp with our fragmented modern/post-modern minds.  It is a discipline to help us disconnect from the false conditioning of our lives and to reconnect with our authentic being.  Religion is basically a form of conditioning.  Yoga is about spiritual practice and spiritual evolution.  It is experiential rather than dogmatic.

Having said this, it is somewhat disheartening to look around at the state of yoga education which is currently popular in the West.  A recent article in Elephant Journal article addresses the fact that many so-called yoga instructors do not meditate. (http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/03/why-yogis-dont-meditate/)  From my understanding of the yoga tradition as I have studied and practiced it both at home and in India, the idea of a “yogi” who does not meditate is an oxymoron.  An instructor who is not personally familiar with some form of meditation practice is not a yoga instructor.  He or she might be a teacher of calisthenics but not yoga.

The physical practices of yoga, i.e. asana, are a small subset of what is all about.  There are various definitions of yoga throughout the literature.  For example Patanjali states, “Yoga means bringing the patterns of mind into a state of stillness.”  In a similar vein, Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita states, “Yoga means complete mental equanimity.”  Another definition found throughout the traditional literature is that yoga means the union of the individual self and the Universal Self.  All three definitions point to the same thing: a transcendence of the conceptual ego and the realization of a deeper dimension of being; or more simply put “inner peace.”

This may or may not bring us to the peculiar case of Mr. Choudhury.  To be honest I have never been a fan of his style of yoga.  I have had friends who tried out or were even fond of his “hot Yoga.”  From my training at the Bihar School of Yoga, it seemed to make no sense.  It seemed to be about a particular sequence of asanas (postures) without any regard to individual needs, superficial in that in only focuses on the body and perhaps, um “stinky.”  My greatest reservation was that it did not seem to be connected to the greater, spiritual dimension of yoga (in which case, as noted above, it is not yoga.)

My concerns have been recently confirmed by a series of lawsuits brought against Bikram Choudhury. (http://blogs.yogajournal.com/yogabuzz/2013/07/will-bikram-yoga-survive.html)  Overall it appears that his yoga concession is a travesty of the yoga tradition.  If the charges are true, he is guilty of sexual harassment and rape.  Beyond the criminal scope the reports are that he is racist, misogynistic and homophopic.  He definitely does not seem to exemplify the loving openness and self-discipline that is the heart of yoga. 

Of course it is easy to judge and judgment is a characteristic of limited ego-identification.  On the other hand we need to use discernment and discrimination in a wise way to avoid the snake oil sellers on the path.  The Universal Being uses us all at times as teachers and as students.  An errant guru may impart as much wisdom as a “good” one.  The teaching is always relevant to where we are in terms of our own psycho-spiritual development.

Science and Mysticism

Mainstream science says that the universe is made of matter and energy.  We are saying that it is made of matter, energy and consciousness. – Edgar Mitchell

All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves. – Bill Hicks

I remember a conversation that took place with a student of one of my yoga classes in the early eighties.  I had recently returned from a three-month stint at the ashram in India.  I was babbling on about the importance of “consciousness” and she stopped me to ask, “Consciousness of what?”  I don’t remember exactly how I replied because it seemed so obvious to me that I was talking about awareness itself regardless of any particular object.

Consciousness in and of itself is a hard concept for many of us to grasp.  Like any valid concept it points to something real beyond the word, beyond the symbol.  It refers us back to the immediacy of experience.  We have no experience, no knowledge, no thought nor emotion without being conscious of it.  Consciousness is a primary ingredient of any experience, even a scientific experiment. 

I just recently returned from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) conference.  IONS takes the study of consciousness seriously and supports research based on this new paradigm of a conscious universe.  This includes Dean Radin’s research on parapsychology, Bruce Lipton’s on epigenetics, Lisa Rankin’s on a more holistic approach to medicine, J. Ivy’s use of poetry to open new awareness, new findings and theories in physics, as well as traditional wisdom as presented by Toltec teacher Don Miguel Ruiz and West African Priestess Luisah Teish.  The basic idea is that scientific methodology and the mystical methodologies of consciousness exploration can compliment each other.  The overall energy of the presenters and participants was so high that I kept slipping into states of meditative ecstasy. 

There are different ways of approaching the study of consciousness.  The yogic or mystical approach is the most direct.  Its methodology is to dissociate from mental and sensory objects to experience a state of transcendent oneness.  Unfortunately, this approach is so entirely beyond the scope of ordinary scientific endeavor that the two cannot be connected.  This might be best illustrated by the experience of Dr. Eben Alexander who had a spontaneous mystical experience facilitated by a seven-day, near death coma.  Dr. Alexander went into a reality of beauty, joy and unconditional love that completely overwhelmed his mind.  Because such experiences are beyond our usual realm of perception they are often relayed in terms that seem nonsensical.  They’re not so much nonsensical as non-sensory.  Materialist pundits such as Bill Maher have gone out of their way to mock certain elements of his description of his experience.  Mockery and demeaning however are simply the techniques of bullies who fear that their territory might be in threat. 

Another approach is that of Radin’s who does serious research on parapsychology, i.e. the effects of consciousness upon matter and energy.  Actually it goes beyond that to evidence the existence of a collective mind-energy which influences our experience.  There is serious evidence that telepathy (mind to mind communication across space and time), remote viewing, psychokinesis, etc. actually exist.  Unfortunately this area of research is underfunded and subject to ridicule from establishment bullies.  It seems to pose a serious threat to the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. 

Yet another approach is neuro-psychological.  We can study the effect of spiritual practices on brain functioning and human behavior.  Multiple studies have shown the positive effects of meditation practices on brain functioning.  Unfortunately this leaves out the essential ingredient of consciousness.  True meditation is about recognizing and resting in consciousness itself.  However we can measure to a certain extent whether meditation practice has a positive effect on psychological development.  There is a great deal evidence to support this.  Meditation practice “catalyzes development” in the words of Roger Walsh MD.  It improves health, slows aging and supports cognitive functioning.  Unfortunately many people think that meditation is something difficult and foreign.  Meditation is really about enabling us to relax into our own essential being. 

Thinking can be difficult and even exhausting at times.  Meditation is simply disconnecting from thought in order to reset and reboot our mental and physical energy.  As Richard Miller, Ph.D. suggested, perhaps we should divest of this whole mystique of “meditation” and simply talk about “resting in being.”  Unfortunately, whatever words we choose there is an enormous room for misconception.  Being is so simple, so present, so easy to overlook that we often miss it in our everyday preoccupations.  

Love and Control

“Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” ~ Rumi

“Love your fellow being as you love yourself.” – Jesus

Suppose I am in love with a beautiful person.  I think of her often and anticipate the opportunities to be with her.  She gives me such great pleasure when we are together, not just sexually but just in our togetherness; and in the feeling that I am loved and special in her eyes.  I love her because she allows me to love myself.  Hopefully I return the compliment.  But what happens when something inevitably goes awry?  Perhaps she is not as attentive as before.  Maybe she has ideas and opinions that I just can’t stand.  Maybe I suspect that she is attracted to someone else . . .

Just as suddenly and wonderfully the high came on it can be killed.  Then I am back to square one; trying to love myself.  If my self-loathing is so strong that I feel that I just can’t tolerate it, I might just try to manipulate her into some behavior that might “bring back that loving feeling.”  (Any Righteous Brothers fans?  Just in case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QaASwKbUGE.)  Truth is one has to love oneself before he or she can love another. 

My sense is that violence comes out of our inability to accept and love ourselves.  Instead we seek to control others so that they reflect some sort of facsimile of love.  To feel powerful and in control is not even close to feeling loved.  This is the tragic side of all of our real and fictional villains.  As soon as we move into control we have given into fear and have relinquished love.  Let God be in control, let Love be control. 

Love doesn’t differ between you and me.  In Love we all are One.  Ego tries to control out of fear.  God moves effortlessly and endlessly out of Love. 

The Transcendent Singularity

The human design process will achieve a kind of infinite velocity,

everything becomes linked with everything else and matter becomes mind.

-    Erik Davis (Techgnosis, 1998)

Matter is derived from mind, not mind from matter.

– Tibetan Book of the Dead

We are accelerating inexorably into a crisis point in our evolution.  Our capitalist-industrial culture has poisoned the very earth that we depend for our survival in a search for short-term profits.  Global weather patterns are changing dramatically.  Political and financial systems are falling apart.  The future of the human race doesn’t look too good.  As much as we might try to deny it our world is changing from under our feet.  Impermanence is not an abstract concept these days but a daily reality.

At the same time our technological growth is increasing at an exponential rate.  Scientific discoveries, new ideas and inventions are happening constantly and reshaping our world in ways that our old traditions just can’t keep up with.  This is where the idea of the singularity comes in.  Futurists such as Ray Kurzweil predict that at some point in the very near future that we will have developed machines that are superior to us in intelligence.  Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is open to interpretation.  The question of whether or not a machine can be conscious, or self-aware, is disputable as well.

The singularity is the scientific equivalent of the apocalypse.  It is the end of humanity and the beginning of the “transhuman” era.  By definition we cannot predict what will happen at this point.  As Kurzwel predicts, “By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.”  The idea is that we will transcend our biology and merge with our machines.  This is really just a new techno version of our age-old impetus towards spiritual transcendence.  As Kurzwel eloquently explains:

“Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.” (The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin Books (September 26, 2006)

Some would argue that the singularity is not just imminent; it has arrived.  Certainly the explosion of technologies such as the internet, cell phones and tablets, world-wide social media etc. have created a world that would be unrecognizable to my grandparents who grew up in an age before automobiles of telephones.  In a very real sense we are already merging with our machines.  It is a love affair, a merging through “bhakti.”  This was evidenced this morning at Starbucks where I looked up from my Kindle to see a pretty young woman gazing raptly into the screen of her smart phone. 

It is evident in perhaps a more sinister way in meta-data surveillance, location tracking and the increasing ability of both business and government to follow our activities and habits.  We may feel outrage and complain all we want but this is part of our brave new world as well.  We all have to be savvy protectors of our “personal identities” as they are revealed through our electronic footprints.  In a sense, like with all love affairs, there is an undercurrent of battle to maintain our personal autonomy. 

Yogis (consistent practitioners of yoga, not cartoon bears) have sought and reportedly found a similar transcendence of the human condition through Samadhi.  Samadhi is a state of consciousness in which one recognizes that one is not body nor mind but pure awareness, pure being.  Yoga is an inner technology of the mind, brain and nervous system.  While information technology holds the promise of “uploading” our souls onto some kind of transcendent mainframe, yoga teaches that there is a deep aspect of ourselves which is already immortal and transcendent.  It is known as the Atman, or Self.  “The knowing Self,” states the Katha Upanishad, “is not born; It does not die. It has not sprung from anything; nothing has sprung from It. Birthless, eternal, everlasting, and ancient, It is not killed when the body is killed.” 

We “know” this inner self when the mind becomes quiet, when we detach ourselves from info-stream of the mind and senses.  According to the Yoga Sutras we are in a state of spiritual ignorance, or avidya, when we are identified with our personal identities.  The personal identity or ego is a temporary manifestation of that greater Self.  Ultimately it cannot be contained as “information.”  Instead it is the formless awareness that cognizes information.  The Self is separate from mind and body and so is separate from their technological extensions.  The yogi considers mind and body as instruments of the inner being.  So too our technologies are tools and toys for us as soul-beings.  The trick as always is to try to remember our true identity in the midst of chaos.

The transformation of our external and internal worlds of experience is a wild ride.  Hang onto your Self!

Here are some links to more information of the singularity concept:

http://io9.com/7-totally-unexpected-outcomes-that-could-follow-the-sin-512600550

http://www.finerminds.com/lifestyle/singularity-technology-superintelligence/

http://www.seriouswonder.com/zoltan-istvan-the-transhumanist-wager

Reality and Illusion

The ego mind paints its own picture onto reality and we then judge “good” or “bad” on the basis of this hallucination. Our ego mind cheats us by projecting its own hallucinated view of reality, in which we believe. – Lama Yeshe

The mind of an individual is a part of the cosmic universal mind. You must understand that your individual mind is part of the universal mind. The space in this room is an individual space, but it is also a part of a greater space. Because you have four walls around it, you call it your room space. Similarly, the individual mind is a concept and not a reality. – Swami Satyananda Saraswati

The idea that our reality is an illusion runs through many spiritual traditions and has cropped up again as people attempt to interpret quantum physics.  Absolute reality (and face it, what other kind of reality matters?) is not to be found in the circumstances that we seemingly find around us.  The sensory world albeit how indisputably real it seems is not it.  Instead it is the mind that constitutes our reality.  “It’s all in your mind?”  Actually, it is all in our mind. 

Our symbolic mind can be seen as a conceptual overlay of reality.  It is an attempt at describing, encoding and interpreting reality symbolically, whether linguistically, mathematically or otherwise.  This is a wonderful capacity but the problem is that we come to live in a world that is primarily conceptual.  We take the map to be the territory.  As one of my favorite writer-teachers, Robert Anton Wilson, said, “We all see only that which we are trained to see.”  We see our world through the eyes of our own experience based upon our cultural conditioning. 

Absolute reality is beyond concepts, beyond interpretation and more immediately present as the tip of your own nose.  True reality is not something that we need to seek but that which is already ever-present.  It is the unified field of consciousness underlying the illusory separateness of our experience.  Absolute reality is not involved in our space-time continuum.  However it is ever-present.  It is foremostly within us although it is also projected without.  It is immanent as well as transcendent.  Our primary problem is that we focus entirely on the manifest circumstances of our experience rather than resting in the reality of our unified being.