A
wind rose up out of the valley and wrestled with the tips of trees.
The forest was a city of junglewood, its entrance a tangle of banyan
and cashew limbs that creaked against the wind, their leaves sighing.
A sadhu entered the forest, the air draped about him like a thick moss
-- like a dream, like a deep and heavy sleep. As legend tells it, he
entered seeking the darshan of Lord Shiva, whose dark form had eluded
him through countless pilgrimages to the temples of men. Now in this
temple of silent eyes, teak leaves crackled like parchment underfoot
as he struggled forth in search of his God.
Shiva
was in the forest, watching. Yet each time the sadhu's eyes turned
toward him, Shiva would gracefully turn his back, revealing the
splendor of Parvati, the goddess. For indeed, as those who know
whisper, Shiva and Parvati, his creative power, are as one. Parvati is
but the other face of Shiva.
The
sadhu was so intent upon finding Lord Shiva that he did not even
notice Parvati. He saw only delicate mosses, white jasmine and knotted
trees bent like sages, and not the dark tresses of his Lord within the
forest creepers. Shiva circled again and again, turning each time to
reveal some new wonder. The sadhu remained oblivious.
The
story of Shiva and the hapless sadhu plays upon the mystery of the
spiritual quest, that God is both seen and unseen. Its image of Lord
Shiva hiding Himself in plain sight is honored in the tradition of
hatha yoga by naming the 'rotated' or twisting poses of hatha yoga 'parivritta',
after the goddess Parvati, recalling the image of Shiva's turning. In
rotated poses, the yogi takes his stance and then twists, turning his
back and reversing the pose. The pose is thus turned inside out,
bringing to the fore the unknown -- the part of the body which is
unseen, hence overlooked and mysterious. Hatha yogis are celebrants of
such mysteries, known for turning things -- even themselves -- on
their heads to find God. Their tradition seeks the 'unseen' experience
of the divine within the 'seen', within the body itself. Their
postures and practices venture into the last place one would think to
look, and find there the face and gestures of the Lord. The yogi
finally 'sees' when he makes an offering of his own vision,
sacrificing his ordinary way of seeing things for the sake of a
higher, more expanded vision.
In
Anusara Yoga we make each pose an offering. But what are we offering,
and how? It's not that God looks down from His heaven like a doting
parent and says, "Nice Dog Pose -- thank you!" The monk in
the forest must have thought -- at least for a moment -- that he was
making a tough and noble sacrifice, one worthy of at least a peek at
God. But acts of sacrifice truly mean little and can even be deluded,
until we are ripe to see through new eyes.
In
yoga, spirituality involves sacrifice -- but not sacrifice in the
sense of a painful relinquishment or penance. In yoga, sacrifice is
not martyrdom. The body is not meant to suffer for the aspirations of
the spirit, for the body is not only the offering; it is the altar,
the holy ground upon which we approach the Lord. It is in and through
this body that we rise higher, not apart from it. What is the
offering, the sacrifice we make? We sacrifice the sense that we are
separate from God. The body is not the gulf that separates us from
God; it is the bridge over which we must pass to meet Him.
My
understanding of this came slowly. I knew that giving yourself on the
spiritual path involves work, but I had a habit of equating hard work
with suffering -- a noble suffering perhaps, but suffering
nonetheless. Only after having done my practice did I understand that
hard work done with spiritual intent produces inner nectar, and that
such nectar is its very purpose. It was my own attitude that was
keeping me from tasting it.
The
ancient Vedas embellish this point, and what I read from the Vedas
during that time was vital to my reaching a better understanding of my
hatha yoga practice. According to the Vedas, both eternal life and the
fulfillment of our worldly life are founded upon sacrifice. The Vedas
do recognize that we ultimately long for immortality, and submit that
this is really an aspiration for the deathlessness of the divine Self.
In Vedic lore the story of our longing is told as the legendary quest
for amrita, a word that means both 'nondeath' (a-mrta), and nectar or
'ambrosia.' In legend, the gods win and maintain eternal life by
offering soma, the herb of immortality, as a sacrificial oblation that
is transformed by the sacrifice into amrita.
Soma
is the herb that is sacrificed. It's worth noting that this very word
'soma' has found its way into our language as a root word signifying
the body. This makes the legend all the more suggestive for a hatha
yogi. For it is not enough simply to possess soma to benefit from it.
As the Vedas tell it, the gods were the first to discover that only by
offering or surrendering soma to another does the giver enjoys its
benefits. The asuras, the 'antigods' or demons, failed to understand
just that. Asuras who managed to steal the soma took it selfishly into
their own mouths and thus failed to win the immortality they sought.
The
Vedic moral is clear: the secret of a full life is sacrifice. And so
in those times rituals were performed to offered foods such as rice
and ghee (which represent soma) to the gods. These oblations rose up
to sustain the gods, while the remains of the sacrifice granted to
humankind a kind of immortality as well as abundance in return. Those
who sacrificed received not only the honored features of a full life
-- health, wealth and good and faithful companionship -- but also a
life span of one hundred years, which at that time was prized as a
kind of mitigated immortality.
Yet
the Vedas looked beyond the promise of benefits or reward to a deeper
understanding of the body and of the life we enjoy through it. The
ritual of sacrifice was not a process of bartering with the gods for
more time on this earth; it carried a sense of responsibility that
recognized that life is a gift. According to brahmanic theory, the
body we each inhabit is really on loan from the gods -- in particular,
from Yama, the Lord of Death. Sacrifice is payment on the loan; a
failure to sacrifice results, quite simply, in repossession (i.e.
death). And so our life literally carries a mortgage (an English term
that literally means 'dead pledge') -- our life is our property, yet
we must repay our debt or suffer the loss of it. And what we have --
our very body and the fruits of our work -- is our means for repaying
it.
There's
a reason why this debt is thought to exist. Ancient wisdom has it that
the universe is the product of God's own sacrifice. The early Vedas
describe the universe as coming about through the self-sacrifice of
the cosmic god-man Prajapati. In one of many Vedic accounts, a passage
from the Satapatha Brahmana, it is said, "Verily, Prajapati alone
was here in the beginning. He desired 'May I exist, may I reproduce
myself.' He toiled, he heated himself with inner heat. From his
exhausted and overheated body the waters flowed forth" and from
those waters came all of the elements of creation.
What
does this story say to us about ourselves and our world? First, that
the world comes from goodness and perfection, and that the expression
of that perfection in all of its variety requires that God somehow
descend and disperse into manyness. This takes work, an expenditure of
energy; in a very significant sense, creation of the world by God was
a sacrifice. Legend dramatizes this by depicting God as Prajapati, who
exhausted and even dismembered Himself to produce all of creation.
Recognizing this, one specific Vedic ritual represents Prajapati as a
golden person. The purpose of the ritual is to restore the body of
Prajapati back to wholeness by offering back a part of what He had
given to us -- our wealth in the form of offerings of pure food such
as rice and other grains. The process of sacrifice is called
agnicayana, the 'piling of [the] Fire [altar],' and a feature of this
ritual was the installation of a golden image of a man, of Prajapati,
the cosmic person. Gold is the purest element to arise from
Prajapati's self-sacrifice, and gold symbolizes the purity of our
offering in return to Him, in gratitude for creating and providing for
us. The purity of gold symbolizes great heat and intense work. Its
brilliance symbolizes the light of wisdom generated by fire; through
sacrifice we ourselves shine with greater wisdom and become whole in
our own understanding.
Sacrifice
began with an offering of the outer fruits of labor; yet slowly there
emerged in Indian thought the insight that we must also internalize
this sacrifice. True sacrifice involves an inner labor. In other
words, it isn't enough to simply perform the ritual on the outside,
for the outer world is only a sign of the inner. This insight was
inspired by the nondualist teachings of the Upanishads. Sacrifice
becomes fruitful by offering to another; yet the Upanishads raised the
question, Whom do we seek, and to whom do we really offer our
sacrifice? They answered by erasing the line between human and divine
with the teaching 'Thou art That.' If we are to locate the God to whom
we are making the sacrifice and thus have the sacrifice bear fruit, we
must turn within.
The
development took a particular historical form in the tradition of
hatha yoga, which turned attention to the inner workings of the body.
The hatha yogis practiced their yoga as an inner sacrifice, a yagna
meant to perfect the spirit by an inner fire. The body is the
offering; its fluids are the soma, which is transformed through the
processes of hatha yoga into amrta, the nectar of immortality. By
drinking the nectar produced within ourselves by these processes we
become immortal.
Other
elements of the sacrificial fire are represented in hatha yoga as
well. The inner heat arising from our practice is the fire. The breath
is the wind, which fans the flame and carries the sacrifice upward to
the divine -- located not in some distant heaven, but in the sahasrar
in the crown of the head. Sacrifice, the yogis argued, is not only an
exchange between two different worlds, between men and the gods; by
inward sacrifice there is a process of self-transformation in which
man realizes his own divinity.
My
own experience of this process as I practiced hatha yoga in the heat
of the Indian summer confirmed this. My practice intensified the heat;
and the added heat came from within. I went through phases in which I
sweated profusely, and the sweat was bitter and acrid, the sign of an
inner purging. These phases passed as quickly and unexpectedly as they
came, and each time my body was left much lighter, in the sense of
being less dense. The only analogy I could think of was the process of
clarifying butter; as butter is cooked with a slow and steady heat,
the solids within it rise to the surface and are skimmed off. This
leaves a light, transparent oil that is able to take even greater heat
without burning up. Like that, my body was being clarified in the heat
of the practice. The muscles were stronger yet less congested, and
energy seemed to flow through me more freely. At the same time,
emotions came up during my practice that seemed strangely exaggerated.
They too passed, leaving me with a greater inner clarity.
The
hardest thing for me to understand in the midst of all this was how
such physical processes could have anything to do with spiritual
awareness. Yet the two really do go hand in hand, and this phenomenon
is what the hatha yogis set out to study. They were the first to map
out and systematically explain the inner landscape of the six chakras,
the energy wheels or circles of transformation that exist within the
subtle body. They understood why and how the physical processes
involving these chakras is vital to spiritual liberation because they
understood how the subtle energies that converge upon these chakras
influence our emotional and spiritual awareness. The clarification of
these energies that takes place through the practice of hatha yoga is
the yagna. In this yagna, each of us is once both sacrificer and
deity. Each of us is Prajapati. Like the statue installed to complete
the sacrifice in ancient ritual, the golden sacrificial body of the
yogi is Prajapati made whole. Our auspicious debt is to restore
ourselves to wholeness through yoga, reversing the process of our own
dissolution and death. This is divine alchemy, in which the base metal
of the body is changed into gold. As the body becomes more pure and
transparent, we gain a spiritual eye with which to perceive the
divine.
Swami
Muktananda simply and eloquently expresses the spirit of this
tradition in Reflections of the Self when he recommends the
study of hatha yoga and pranayama, saying "All your nerves will
be purified; your body will be transformed into gold." Baba does
not use the word 'gold' as a loose metaphor; the body becomes gold,
merged into Consciousness by our own process of awakening to a
spiritually vibrant awareness of the Self. To the spiritually
perceptive eye, the yogi's body radiates a golden glow.
When
we understand that hatha yoga is a means to this transformation, we
can understand it as something broader in scope and significance than
just a system of exercises and stretches designed to keep the body
fit. Hatha yoga originally included the whole process of
transformation, both the physical practice and the grace that brings
it about spontaneously. It was a tradition begun by Siddhas who were
the first hatha yogis. They discovered the outer postures and inner
processes of hatha yoga through their own experiences in meditation,
and they incorporated those discoveries into spiritual practice.
The
teachings of the hatha yoga tradition first appeared in systematic
form in the tenth century through the work of a Siddha master named
Matsyendranath. From his teachings there emerged the 'Natha tradition'
of Siddhas. "Nath" means "Lord," and is derived
from the name of Shiva; the Natha yogis embraced and expounded upon
the philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism. Matsyendranath founded the hatha
yoga tradition of the Natha sect and was followed by his spiritual
heir Goraksanath. Goraksanath systematically put the tradition forth
in writing, featuring the first detailed accounts of hatha yoga poses
and techniques of pranayama, or breath control, as well as of the
physical and spiritual benefits of the practice.
The
Natha Siddhas were not interested in abstract or speculative
philosophy per se; they were convinced that the way to the Truth was
through practice and direct experience. And while they recognized that
the Self has an aspect that is beyond time, change and the reach of
the senses, they also argued that the Self has a dynamic aspect that
manifests itself in and through the physical world. It is through the
experience of this dynamic aspect of the Self, they said, that we
reach the transcendent. This placed the Natha tradition of spiritual
practice squarely in the physical world of concrete experience, with
all of its infinite complexity. The story of the sadhu in search of
Shiva captures the attitude of the Natha tradition. The yogi is called
to step beyond the simplicity of rituals of sacrifice and worship in
temples and venture into the tangled forest of the world -- for Shiva
is also there, though we may not recognize Him at first.
One
of the most revolutionary contributions of the Natha Siddhas is their
understanding of the body and its relation to spiritual reality. The
body is a microcosm of a much greater reality: God. The world itself
is really the body of Shiva, and our own body is an inseparable part
of that organic whole. An enduring part of the Natha revolution was
the understanding that followed from this -- that our spiritual
well-being is closely related to our own health and relationship with
the rest of the world. Spiritual and physical health are both
manifestations of the Kundalini Shakti, the spiritual power of the
universe. Our simplest acts to maintain our health are really
sacrificial acts of worship honoring the divinity that both gives us
life and brings us to full spiritual awareness.
In
this context, health means far more than simply freedom from sickness.
Taking into account the true purpose of the body, health has a broader
meaning. It is the capacity -- the steadiness or hardiness of body --
to sustain the process of transformation that takes place through
spiritual awakening and practice. Jnaneshwar Maharaj, a Natha Siddha
initiated in the lineage of Matsyendranath and Goraksanath, best
described this process of transformation in his greatest work, the
Jnaneshwari. In a passage of the Jnaneshwari, he details the process
by which "one body" -- a new spiritual body -- "devours
another" -- the gross physical body. "This" he says,
"is the secret teaching of the Natha sect."
Though
Jnaneshwar speaks with a poet's voice, he is describing quite
accurately the transformation that takes place through the practices
of yoga by the grace of the Kundalini Shakti. The kundalini is the
fire, while the offering is not just the actions we perform through
the body, but the understanding behind our efforts, which he calls a
"wisdom sacrifice." Ultimately, the offering is this; in all
acts and practices to see God in oneself and others, and to act
without expectation or selfish motive.
In
particular, Jnaneshwar describes how the yogic practices of posture
and breathing or pranayama, offered with right understanding, bring
about this transformation by the fire of the Kundalini Shakti. The
process itself is mysterious, defies explanation, and is very real.
Its outcome is that the body becomes filled with nectar and takes a
new and radically different birth. This new body is strong and
deathless, made of light and lightness itself. One who does these
practices with devotion, he says, is rewarded with experiences of pure
and perfect knowledge -- the nectar of the sacrifice. For such a one,
"there remains only the essential Self in which there is no
longer any difference between the fire and the sacrificer. As they are
satisfied with the nectar which remains from the sacrifice, and as
they attain the state of immortality, they are easily united with
God."
I
remember the power that Jnaneshwar's words had for me as I read them.
I studied his meticulous descriptions of the sitting postures, bandhas
and forms of breath control or pranayama of hatha yoga that feed the
fire of the kundalini. This was before I had undertaken a complete
practice of hatha yoga, and as it turned out, his words provided the
inspiration for me to begin. During the monsoon I read his words and
practiced them before going out to do my work in the gardens of the
Siddha Meditation ashram in which I was staying. One morning as I
practiced the vajra or 'thunderbolt' posture as he described it, all
of the elements of posture and breathing came together strongly and
spontaneously. My breath, which had become balanced through the
pranayama, suddenly drew into me very strongly. It was locked into my
body through the posture and drawn upwards. From somewhere inside, a
pinpoint of light leapt up and exploded in a shiver of white light in
the crown of my head that permeated my body. My breath was somehow
suspended within. It had disappeared into subtle passages within me
like water into sand, and it seemed as if there was no longer any need
to breathe. At the same time, my awareness shifted and expanded to
include everything around me; there was no longer any separation
between myself and my surroundings.
Within
a few moments my body released the breath and returned to its normal
way of functioning. But even as I went to the gardens, this awareness
remained with me. I remember crossing the great field surrounded by
trees next to the ashram, and being acutely aware of the clouds above
and everything around as not being 'things' apart from me. I felt that
I was looking down through the clouds at the same time as I looked out
upon the field through my eyes. I felt a single force of awareness
running through my body, moving blood and breath and pulsing through
the trees, in the sunlight, and in the wind.
I
experienced this state as something very refined and intimately
connected with my breath. As long as I remained centered in the
breath, watching it as it flowed in a perfect balance between inbreath
and outbreath, the experience remained. Yet as I became occupied with
my duties, my breath became more uneven and this state began to fade.
It's difficult to be a universe and a gardener at the same time; the
experience is so expansive that your body is literally shaken by it,
yet so delicate that it must be handled like a fragile seedling in the
palm of your hand.
It
was not long after that experience that I first began a full practice
hatha yoga, because the experience had taught me how vital it is to
receiving and holding this state. I was fortunate to begin with at
least a germinal understanding of the true nature of the practice.
"Hatha" is traditionally translated as "force,"
yet I understood that the experience we seek is far to powerful to be
forced; it has to unfold naturally through grace, or else it is
overwhelming. Though hatha yoga is a strong practice, it is not to be
practiced aggressively to 'make' spiritual growth happen. Grace is a
very real force that works through us when we do the practice. The
practice of hatha yoga gently urged upon us by the Siddhas is part and
parcel of the process of that unfolding. A gift as precious as God's
grace requires a golden vessel. This vessel, the body, becomes golden
only by sacrifice, by giving of oneself through the practices of yoga.
This same vessel becomes golden and filled with nectar in return.
Yogic
practice that is open to the possibility of -- and is enlivened by --
grace reveals much that we do not ordinarily recognize -- about
ourselves, our bodies, about true health, strength and sacrifice, and
about the presence of God within all of these. This legacy of the
Natha Siddhas is the understanding that through the body we complete
the circle of creation, offering back to God what He has granted us --
a body and a life made golden by His grace.
