ISHTA SYSTEM BLOG

Navaratri and the goddess extraordenaire

2008-10-12T12:33:00.017+11:00

" Oh my god I have legs and feet" I proclaimed as I tightly gripped the foam block between my thighs, while teaching about the power of the pelvic floor in Tadasana in class. I had been putting that block between my legs for about 8 years as part of the starting days of learning Tadasana in the Teachers Training, but had never really felt its effect. No wonder this exercise goes down so well, its incredible how much energy surges through the legs and feet when you really focus on them. Of course I had felt this before, but the brain has a way of going on automatic and forgetting what things feel like when you first did them. It makes an assumption based on past experiences and then projects that into the future as reality. In yoga this notion of past reflection and future projection is called the wheel of Dharma. When we live in a reality based in what we know and remember we are caught like a hamster on a wheel. but if we can learn to embrace each moment as a complete adventure then we can get off the wheel and play in the dance of our own making.

Last week I decided to dance. Not dance in the literal sense, but rather as a way to find out more about myself as a woman and how to be more true to myself. I used the beautiful Navaratri ritual as my framework and discovered many wonderful and new things about myself and the women I share my world with.
Navaratri is a celebration of the Goddess in the form of Durga. It marks the occasion of her defeat of the great Buffalo demon and as such represents the triumph of good over evil. Durga is also the great mother and can also be worshiped as Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati to name a few. Navaratri is celebrated over 10 days and 9 nights and usually starts around the new moon in September/October.

For me this celebration was especially significant as I had just recently done an amazing workshop called " The path of love" which had helped me to release a great deal of shock around my mothers early death and also enabled me to establish strong boundaries around myself. I had been using Durga as my personalized deity ( Ishta devata) since completing the workshop, so was excited to honor her during my own Navaratri celebration. But I didn't actually know it was Navaratri until I began my practice on the new moon. I had my period that day and had welcomed it with a short practice which included offerings of flowers, some simple mantras and more relaxed asanas, but something in me went a bit overboard and I found myself doing things I would only do if I was in a more ritualistic frame of mind. I had a sense that something was up and so mid practice Google'd " Hindu holidays" and there it was first on the list, Navaratri starts today. I had to chuckle to myself about woman's intuition and came up with an idea for a nine day ritual at that exact moment. Each day I would pick flowers for the goddess and then place a photo on the altar adorned with prayers and mantras. It sounds simple in its inception but ultimately it led me to discover some simple yet profound truths about myself.

The first day I welcomed Durga in the form of the great goddess, I honored her blood, her sex, her beauty and her wild tigress. I danced and howled and sat with the image of a red flower in my heart. I felt her slicing away the demons that had kept me from loving myself. I also saw her as the great mother conquering all the pain of the world. Durga was a solo woman and had all the power of the shining ones within her. It is said that what enabled her to slay her opponent was, not the piercing blade of her sword, but the shakti in her foot. Apparently as she touched the demon with her foot he was so overwhelmed by her shakti that he dropped his guard and was defeated.

During Navaratri Durga is worshiped for the first 3 days. On the 2nd day I went for a morning walk and discovered that all the new leaves on the trees are red before they turn green. Everywhere I looked I saw Mother nature in her red garments. My altar that day was splashed with every red flower imaginable and my words and prayers were " I know why the goddess is dressed in red! the flush of new leaves, the red of her blood, the red of her sunset skies and rose red dawns, the color of her tongue, the rush of her soft red heart, the red of her earth"
On the 3rd day I saw myself as Durga the protector and felt the power of pure consciousness within me. I held my hands in front of me in the Mudra of protection and allowed myself to imagine an infinite sky with infinite possibilities. She was the seed planted in the soil and there was nothing to do but to grow towards the sunlight.

And the sun goddess that met her was Lakshmi in brilliant yellows and golds. Everywhere I walked that next morning I saw sunshine. Trees had especially littered the ground with yellow blossoms just for the occasion. It felt perfect to change the altar around and place a huge silver picture of Lakshmi in the center. While the stock market was in turmoil I was seeing the world showered with more abundance and beauty then ever before. As Lakshmi I offered my prayers as the devoted mother and wife. As the one who sits on the lotus and knows exactly how to burn her internal fires, when to act and when to wait. I prayed for her lotus perfume to heal and pacify the world.
On the second day I honored Lakshmi as the goddess who rains showers of flowers on all the creatures, people, plants and animals of the earth. She was radiant and full of love for family and friends and on her final day I welcomed her as Kamala, the goddess of desire. As Kamala she is that which unfolds things as they are meant to be. Desire is really just the longing we have inside of us to return home. Kamala is also the lotus which knows its muddy origins and enjoys the journey towards the light.
Every day my altar was becoming more and more full, but I have to admit that the focus and work required to really embody the goddess every morning began to take its toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally. I began to feel deep emotions surfacing, as if I'd stirred up an old dead volcano. I was conjuring the goddess alright and she decided to burn up all the things I was still attached to. Instead of feeling vibrant and radiant like Lakshmi I was glued to my bed with all over body aches. I felt like I had gone swimming for too long and was wringing out towels of tears. But Saraswati was calling me with her pure white feathers, her melodious tones and wise wise words, so I braved a short walk up the street for some white flowers and made this my prayer" Jai Saraswati Ma, the beautiful creature artist, who shines her light of inspiration through her flowing vibrations of song, dance and speech, art and wisdom. May your words be on my lips and may I hear you as my teacher within. may your love be my faith to conquer my fears".

That day Saraswati's wisdom reminded me that I had worked for 8 sold months teaching and sharing Yoga and my body needed a rest. Saraswati told me to have massages, adjustments, acupuncture and therapy sessions and to take herbs. I spent all of Saraswati's 3 days deep in self study trying to listen to what my body heart and mind needed and it worked. I stopped moving and rested. I think as women we are just great at giving and listening to others. We know when we are needed and we love to open our hearts, but we often neglect the one who needs us most,and sometimes we don't even know what we need anymore.

To close my celebrations 12 women joined me in my altar room on the last night of Navaratri. It was an amazing feeling when we all sat down and even more amazing when the women shared what they felt represented them in their power. They claimed their lineage, their hearts, their commitment to truth, their power as mother and healer, their softness, their fairy nature, their ability to manifest and the opportunity to live in the now. Then all these qualities were placed as symbols in the center of the circle and adorned with red, gold and white flowers. We chanted a Mantra to honor the goddess in all her forms and then practiced a sequence of Mudras ( hand gestures) to set a strong intention for ourselves. Then we sat around and ate dessert and caught up with each other, which was great fun.

I purposefully left the altar and the room in a tumbled mess that night so I could come in in the morning and slowly sweep away the world we had created. It was time to move on from the last ten days of celebration, revelation and ritual. Time to take the wisdom of the goddesses and live it in life. Its been a few days and already Navaratri has sunk into the well worn grooves of my instinctual brain and who knows where I will be at and what I will be needing to experience the next time this celebration comes around, but I know now, that the goddess is in me and every women and have nothing but gratitude and awe for all that she inspires.

Yoga as a Path of Love

2008-09-07T14:01:00.007+10:00

If I had known 7 years ago what yoga was really about I probably would have packed up my yoga mat and headed for the hills. But like anything in life no one can tell you what your in for, no one can prepare you for the ride of your life and no one can really explain what the true meaning of Yoga is.

I had heard in lectures that Yoga meant union. Union of body, mind and spirit. And I understood that breath was the link from one to the other. What I didn't know at that time was that Yoga is a multifaceted jewel which carries within it the seeds to true freedom. There was no perfect way to get there, no set path and there was a great deal of trial and error along the way.

I had always sat happily at the feet of my teachers, drinking in their words and letting it inspire my practice. My teachers often told me to practice self inquiry, the practice of Jnana Yoga. I was encouraged to hear their words but then to let those words formulate and emerge as a truth I had discovered for myself. I had thought I was pretty good at that and prided myself in only speaking from my own experiences, but actually on reflection it was easier to take their word as gospel. Why take risks when they had tread the path so carefully before me and anyway I was way too busy teaching Yoga to take the time to look deeply within.

But then I hit a wall in my practice, my nervous system began to fail me and I began to question what Yoga really was. Instead of feeling open and liberated by my practice I flat lined. In recent studies on athletes they found that when they over trained without adequate rest their performance plateaued, and then began to decline. Fatigue set in and with it poor performance levels and a decreased ability to recover. If the athlete continued to over train, the result was total mental, physical and emotional exhaustion. At that point the athletes lost their desire to play their sport, their self esteem lowered and they isolated themselves emotionally, while experiencing heightened anxiety and mood swings. I was also the victim of this syndrome. After nearly 15 years of daily practice my body, mind and spirit needed a rest.

It was with great reluctance that I stopped my strong daily pranayama, meditation and asana practice. When ever I tried even the simplest of yogic practices bells and whistles went off in the nerves in my spine and I felt like a frightened rabbit. Luckily I had a strong, stable and patient partner to anchor me down, A wonderful yoga teacher to share with me the tools and techniques to get grounded and a child to remind me that it was important to stay positive and to play.

The other thing I had was my teaching. I found that by teaching Yoga, I was able to practice Karma yoga, the yoga of selfless service. It was pretty weird teaching without physically practicing it myself, but it helped me to stay connected to the essence of yoga as I had to draw from my own more challenging experiences and find a way to share that Yoga is a practice of learning about the self. Sometimes the body burns out, but as long as we are questing to meet our selves, its Yoga.

It was at this point that I really began to read a lot of Yoga books. I became fascinated with Tantra and its facets of ritual, mantra, mudra and devotion. I read about a complex ritual called the Prana Pratistha. In this ritual you bring power and divine energy to a symbol through a ritualized sequence with breath, mantra, mudra and meditation. To me that meant that any inanimate object could be empowered to represent the divine. I was excited about the idea of honoring the beauty and magic in everything around me. I knew I had to find a way to learn this practice and somehow make it my own.

It wasn't long after discovering that there were more practices and methods to Yoga then asana, pranayama and meditation that I moved from New York City back to my hometown of Byron Bay, Australia. Byron Bay is a beautiful place , a beach town surrounded by a picturesque hinterland. I was in the perfect environment to find my way back to balance. Amidst the green hills and sparkling beaches my nervous system began its slow recovery and as each day passed I was able to return to a more well rounded yoga practice. I also had to rely on my own experiences and understandings to teach Yoga now as my teacher was back In NYC.

I would be lying if I said that being back in Byron brought me to the essence of Yoga. being Back in Byron actually turned up the volume for me on everything. Without the distractions of a big city life there was no way to jump outside myself and avoid my own stuff. I also was getting more balanced and couldn't use my nervous system imbalance as an excuse anymore. Now the heat was on me to really get to know myself and to get to the bottom of what freedom in Yoga was all about.

What appeared next was an unexpected complication in my personal relationship and a passionate longing in me to really know and understand the nature of energy. These two factors were like a fuel that fired me into the core of my own heart and I began to burn in ways I never thought I could burn. I dreamed up a fantastic story to explain why I was here and who I was and somehow I convinced everyone around me to believe in it too. In Yoga the word for illusion is Maya, but Maya also means to measure out, or to create distance between things so they are separate from each other. I began to distance myself from ordinary life for the sake of my yoga quest and immersed myself so deeply into the ritualized aspects of Tantric practice that I couldn't fully connect anymore to my grounded home life. I began to straddle two worlds, and I couldn't commit fully to either of them. I was standing on the earth but my head was in the clouds.

The experience of being both in my body and out of it was both a gift and a curse. On the one hand I was having amazing inner visions, which I expressed through poetry and creative writing. I would dream a whole ritual in my sleep and then wake up and practice it. I felt connected to my own menstrual cycle and the cycle of the moon. Everything had a magic to it and everything shone as a living vibration. I understood the meaning of Shiva and Shakti and the essence of Lila, the divine play of the universe. I also experienced a flowering of my intuition. At the same time, my personal relationship suffered greatly and I detached myself from my close friends and family. Sometimes I had a strong urge to get a cow and become a cave dweller. I wanted to live breathe and eat Yoga all day every day.

I headed to India to find out more about cave dwelling and instead landed in Goa, a haven for Yogis wanting an introduction to India that was safe and more western. I wasn't quite ready for the real India, instead I was taking baby steps into my dreams. It was like putting my toe in the water and not really being brave enough to swim. I was lucky though because I stayed with a fellow Yogi who was also a teacher. I attended daily classes with him and also did my own longer morning practice. It was in India that i began to understand that Yoga wasn't really about philosophy, or practice. India made me see that Yoga lived in the hearts of the people there. Everyone I met was a deity, a divine shining one, especially the women whose laughter and a warmth melted my heart. Every time I went to a market or to town I was just overwhelmed by how content everyone was with whatever life had given them. All of a sudden freedom meant contentment in and laughter at the unpredictability of life. The mornings were filled with the ordinary sounds of men clearing their throats and spitting out the excess, of blaring radios with Hindi music, of cows rummaging through rubbish while the evenings were alive with fire crackers and faraway doof doof music. I never made it to a big temple and never completed any complex Tantric rituals as I had hoped, but I discovered some really profound things about myself.

I discovered that I take myself wherever I go. I am difficult, fearful and controlling at times and also able to laugh and give in to the little things. I like living in a western country and really love the simple things in life like breathing in clean air, making music and having a family. I also realized that i like the struggles and dramas in life and that I am absolutely put on this earth to live them. I am not destined to be enlightened or to live in a cave, rather I am meant to live and love like any ordinary Joe.

Now I feel like I am beginning to finally step on the path of Yoga and to me that path is one of self love. In accepting more of who I am I have found my feet firmly planted on this earth. The clouds are great and will always float by and the visions will continue to come and bring their inspiration, but for now I am enjoying cooking creative dinners for my family, reading about the brain, learning Japanese and teaching Yoga.

ISHTA means INDIVIDUAL

2007-07-05T19:44:00.000+10:00

Because I teach ISHTA yoga and the word ISHTA means individual I have been looking at my personal practice over the last few months and really asking on a very deep level “what do I need as an individual?” This month I have been developing more softness in my practice with a sequence that cools me down and quiets my mind. The sun salutations have taken a backseat to hip openers and forward bends and my meditation is also very relaxed. I have been physically bowing down and imagining myself at the lotus feet of an energy beyond my comprehension.

Today after my practice I found myself contemplating the nature of the witness and also reflecting on some writings by Swami Nisreyasananda from his book ‘Supermarket of Ideas.’ I just finished reading a chapter where he talks about the yogic philosophies of Samkhya (dualism) and Vedanta (non-dualism) in relationship to who is watching whom, where do we focus our energy and attention in every day life, and the nature of surrender.

In my understanding we are patchwork quilt of our experiences; karma, dharma, life force, Mother Nature, ego, mind, intellect and wisdom. Our mind, as an aspect of that complexity, engages us with the intensity of the outer world or through focused practices enables us to withdraw deeply into ourselves. Once we turn inwards a force, which we cannot name, witnesses the mind. In Samkhya this witness is called, Purusha.

In Samkhya they say our individual spirits are different. To me this makes sense because how I experience myself witnessing myself has individual attributes and qualities. But then something must also observe my individual consciousness watching itself. In Tantra this higher witness is called ‘Shiva’. Shiva is not just watching me, ‘it’ is watching everyone. Just as a muscle sheath contains thousands of small fibres, with each fibre controlling a different micro movement, so Shiva as consciousness envelops and watches the individual spirits. We can bow down to this force through pure devotion and say, “you are the witness of everyone, you hold the big picture, I surrender my individual consciousness to you and you lead me.”

Perhaps the Ishta Devata (individualised deity) then is the vibration of that individualised spirit. It is the quality of each individual consciousness. If my Ishta for example is Ganesh then perhaps my spirit comes from the perspective of removing obstacles, and everything is seen through that lens. When chanting Ganesh’s mantra I vibrate at the same frequency as my spirit and am pulled like a magnet towards greater consciousness (Shiva), Shiva being the pseudo father of Ganesh and the father of all deities and energies.

From this philosophical viewpoint then being an individual is extremely important and the development of your individuality through creativity, sensuality, enjoyment, and struggle, suffering, emotional, physical and mental challenges creates an interesting vibration that contributes to the whole. This is the anthesis of spiritual philosophies that ask us to remove ourselves from our attachments and our struggles to achieve enlightenment.

The beauty of honouring individuality means that even the approach to resolving tension is a very personal one. For example: You can witness yourself in any given situation and remain detached or you can ‘rage against the machine’ or even practice active surrender to Ishvara, which in the Sutras is called ‘Ishvara pranidhana’. Ishvara is said to be the teacher of teachers living in a timeless realm.

Swami Nisreyasananda describes Ishvara as “a total fund of perfection, of power, wisdom and glory, not increased by disciplines in time nor decreased by failure to discipline in time. Time doesn’t act on it at all. Such a perfect existence being there any teacher can tune himself to it and get at his place a manifestation of glory.”

It is in this seed of perfection that we can find ourselves in spite of our craziness, our fears and our STUFF, a seed waiting to be watered by the pure act of surrendering ourselves to whatever happens in life.

And isn’t that a daily fluctuation? The mind is moving as fast as it can to keep up with the events that occur and we react so often from our patterns and beliefs rather than just being with the moment’s ever-changing expression.

As I experience it, yoga practice is the opportunity to train my spirit to focus its lens on living, and at the same time to merge back with an all-encompassing consciousness, allowing for watching and being watched. When I immerse myself in moments of stillness and surrender, I notice that my reactions are less unconscious and more considered and that the events that come toward me are more joyful and freeing. In fact the events themselves seem to be conspiring towards my happiness. My practice therefore is inspired by my individuality, and I see it as a creative evolution, remaining free and open to what I need in any particular moment.

Bhakti: The Yoga of the Heart

2007-03-11T17:23:00.000+11:00

This week’s blog is inspired by my own evolving yoga practice. I have been in a very devotional space of late, surrendering more to my vulnerability and allowing art, music and nature to remind me that everything is LOVE.

The yoga of devotion and love is called Bhakti and is defined by George Feuerstein in his Shambala Encyclopaedia of Yoga as “Loving attachment or devotion” and the practice of Bhakti as “A spiritual practice by which the aspirant seeks to acknowledge his or her dependence on a higher power”. The words “loving attachment” bring to mind the image of a newborn suckling the mother’s breast. Perhaps our constant craving for experiences and things to comfort us is really the longing for that familiar feeling of being held by our mother as a baby. Therefore showing feelings and emotion are a large part of Bhakti. We can’t really know what love is unless we experience it as a feeling in our hearts. Simple things like bringing flowers into the home and lighting candles, surrounding ourselves with objects and images of beauty, taking time to listen to music, to dance and play, are all ways to connect with our feelings.

“Acknowledging dependence on a higher power” brings to mind the last of the Niyamas; Isvara pranidhana, from the eight limbs of Pantanjali’s Ashtanga yoga. In a commentary on the sutras by Swami Venkatesananda he defines Isvara as “Isa, What is.” Whatever is unchanging and everlasting is our definition of a higher power. Pranidhana means dynamic surrender. When we can completely let go and trust that we are that higher power then we can surrender in an active way. In other words rather then giving up and saying “ God” will take care of it – God being the guy on a cloud up there who calls the shots. We say “I am a part of everything and therefore when I surrender I trust that the higher aspect of me guides me.” In yoga terms that means surrendering the jiva atman (individualised self) to the Paramatman (greater self).

Bhakti allows for the expression of love and devotion to a symbol or person who has qualities that we know are there but cannot see or touch. In other words it’s easier to love a child, or our lover, then a concept of what they are. By acknowledging the natural world around us we acknowledge the Shakti (energy or vibration) that animates this world. A flower, a shell and a flame are all physical forms of Shakti.

Every morning I gather flowers from my garden. As I gather the flowers I take in the vibrancy of their colours and their heady scents. Then I enjoy arranging them on the various altars strewn throughout my house. In the living room is the family altar. Here we have a few chosen deities, shells we have been collecting on the beach, and beautiful cards from friends. The flowers are placed amongst the trinkets to be enjoyed as we hang out as a family. I practice asana and meditation in my bedroom, so the altar here has many objects and photos that represent the love my partner and I share and also the joy of practice. I spend a few moments once flowers are arranged listening to some devotional music and lighting incense. Our bedroom is very open to nature and so all around me are the birds, the trees and the open sky. My practice itself is an act of devotion. By lovingly reminding myself to breathe and move I am acknowledging the flow of Shakti through every cell of me. My practice also becomes a prayer for the world. As I open myself up to love I pray that that love radiates out to everyone and everything.

Another aspect of Bhakti is singing the names of the divine in Bhajans (chanting in unison) and Kirtans (call and response). In Hinduism there are as many deities as there are aspects to the self. Bhakti adopts the names of these deities and says that each deity has a seed vibration or Bija mantra, If you chant a mantra to Ganesh ( the remover of obstacles) you become Ganesh and that which removes obstacles. Kirtan and Bhajan by their very nature create an atmosphere of love and harmony. Singing with others is a pleasurable experience. A particularly sweet melody can bring tears to the eyes and joy to the heart. In Bhajans and Kirtans the repetition of sound can invoke trance like states and stimulate something called “the relaxation response.” The relaxation response is a parasympathetic nervous system response, which is evoked when doing a repetitive activity with the intention of letting go of the thoughts of the mind.

I have been chanting mantras for 7 years as part of my yoga practice. My teacher Alan Finger often shares mantras with his students to help release a physical mental or emotional block. The practice of Bhakti inspired me to put these mantras to music and sing them with others. When I chant these mantras in Kirtan I feel my connection with my teacher, my teacher’s teachers, and the great yogis who brought these mantras into being. I also just enjoy the simplicity of the music, the friends around me and the sheer joy of the moment, which ultimately reminds me of the bliss that pervades all things.

When reading the words of some of the beautiful teachers from the ISHTA lineage it’s amazing to me how each Guru defines the practice of Bhakti!

For instance Swami Venkatesananda in his book Total Love shares:

“Bhakti is usually translated as “divine love”, but the word also means division. That is where we start. We start with an idea of division – “ I love you”. In “I love you” there is frustration, disappointment. For instance she loves you for some time and then she doesn’t love you. You are shocked, disappointed, frustrated. Then if by God’s grace you come into contact with a holy man, you transfer all this love onto him – “I love my guru.” Then he plays ducks and drakes. You don’t know where you are from one day to another, but still he doesn’t let you go and this love gets a shake up. You still feel you are different and separate from him. Then gradually he hammers at the self-image that you may have. This thing, which was two, “I love you”, is slowly being smashed, because the guru enables you to realise that love is not love, it's a business transaction. Then it is possible that gently the guru might divert your attention to God. “You must love god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, with all your strength.” In order that you may not cling to him. Still there is an ego sense, which is very strong. The ego sense does not go away by merely wishing, because we are encouraged to maintain this division. God is there and you are here and you sit and worship God. Or you sit down and meditate upon god. Or you sit and visualise god within your heart. God suddenly becomes so small that you can fit him inside your heart. These techniques have been given to us merely as an exercise. To visualise the presence of god in the heart means that you visualise God as the limitless being but it is not usually explained that way. We are asked to see a little god in the heart, about the size of the thumb of a newborn babe, a nice neat little image. But this exercise is not the be all and end all of it that that is what is going to lead you to god realisation. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna uses a beautiful expression:

Mayy avesya mano ye mam nityayukta upasate

“…enter yourself into me’, Krishna tells us; ‘don’t try to push me into your heart. You are a small creature and I am infinite. Instead of entering God into your heart, enter yourself into God.

When you practice this, bringing yourself closer and closer to that divine presence until it occupies your whole being or until you feel, ‘God you alone exist’, not I, there is no room for a me. With your heart, with your soul, with your entire being you enter into that presence. And then you begin to feel that we are all in this God who pervades everything. Not he in us. We are all in him!”

Kaviyogi Shuddhanda Bharati in his book “The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo” writes:

“Bhakti yoga unites the psychic heart with the Beloved of the soul. Bhakti yoga is emotional. It is the yoga of the heart. The Bhakta wins the divine grace through perfect selfless devotion to the all-beloved, beautiful blissful one. The lover’s love manifests itself severally. The devotee’s heart seeks union with the divine as a child, servant, mother, a father, friend, or a lover wedded to the beloved. Hanuman, Arjuna and Radha are inspiring examples of consecrated love. Sincere devotion is indispensable and Bhakti holds the supreme place among things that liberate the soul. But to seek the self and settle in its meditation is the real devotion. Bhakti is love shaped, it is extreme attachment to the Lord.”

And from Paramahansa Yogananda’s “The Bhagavad Gita” God talks with Arjuna on the chapter on Bhakti he says:

“The path of the worshipper of the Unmanifested Infinite is very difficult because the devotee has no support from the imaging power of his mind. Worship implies an Object of veneration that holds the attention and inspires reverent devotion, a god of manifested qualities. The formless unknown does not serve well this purpose for most mortal minds. He who is born in a world of forms can scarcely attain a true formless conception of spirit. Worship of the indescribable therefore automatically presupposes the actual experience of the infinite. Only those who are already spiritually advanced enough to intuit the ‘formless Christ’ find joy in this relationship with the divine.

The yogi who worships a personal God, on the other hand utilises step-by-step methods of realisation by which he progresses gradually and naturally towards his goal. The natural method for renunciation of lesser pleasures and attachments is to taste the superior joys of the spirit. The worshipper of a personal God finds all around him and within the inner temple of his consciousness constant reminders of the immanence of God, which fills his heart with divine love and joy, without courting the hardships of a renunciant’s life of vigorous ascetism. The Yogi loves God so deeply that gradually all-lesser desires leave him.

It would seem therefore that God likes the personal relationship with the devotee. He makes it easier for the seeker who sees the divine immanence in creation and concentrates on God as the heavenly father or the cosmic mother or the divine friend possessing “human” qualities. Or just as in slumber the unseen formless human consciousness can shape itself into dream images, so the formless spirit as the creator God can inform His consciousness into any manifestation dear to the devotee’s heart. If the devotee’s ISHTA (object of worship) is Krishna for example, the Lord will assume the concept. All such aspects are in no manner a limitation of God to that form, but are rather like windows opening to the Infinite Spirit.”

And this, about Swami Nisreyasanada in a tribute to him by Shirley Roeloffze;

“It seems to me that Swamiji chose to appear to be a Jnani in the way he discoursed on the Gita, the Upanishads and the books by such people as Joel Goldsmith and Alexis Carol. He would always find scientific or technological examples to illustrate the ancient principles of the Upanishads. But underneath that Swamiji was a Bhakta. I had the privilege of hearing him say one day when we were talking about a successor for his work in Africa ‘there is no one else who loves humanity as much’. It was his love for humanity that people responded to wherever in the world Swamiji went. Anyone who was in pain and troubled went to Swamiji and would leave his presence released and confident that the situation would right itself – as it always did. Anyone who had stayed with him for a little while could not bear to leave. It was such a joy to visit him and we would drag ourselves away with difficulty. With very little outward show Swamiji was a centre of love and people could not help, but respond to that”

From Swami Nisreyasananda’s book “Headlines from Swami” (compiled by Mara Sapere) under the section on LOVE;

“To love something it is not necessary to be near it. The sunset is beautiful why don’t I put it in my pocket? It is not necessary to possess it.”

“If you require a return for duties you will also be a beggar for love. Instead see God in everything and everyone and you will become perfect in body and receive love unasked.”

“If I want to be a reformer of other people God will send people into my life who seem crooked or whom I will see that way. Therefore don’t try to reform – adore only.”

Mani Finger on “The Essence of Love”
In Sanskrit, love means “not death” which is the mystical definition of love – being in itself deathless, eternal and the height of rapture and ecstasy. In our modern world because of man’s fear of death, he is constantly on guard against those experiences which in his own darkness and ignorance he regards as hastening him towards his own death.
Man’s whole life therefore becomes nothing other then a tussle with time. All he becomes concerned with is how much longer he has to live without ever considering the actual truth about death. In this fashion the midwife called ‘experience’ presents him with a monster child called ‘fear’. And it is from this monster that man’s suffering for the rest of his life proceeds. He develops hates, likes and dislikes, frustrations, tensions, jealousies, shyness, duty, conscience, anxiety, doubt and a whole battalion of other traumas, all drawing him away from the technique of Love.

Therefore against this, Yoga describes love as non-death.

All happiness depends on the nature and quality of the object on which man projects his love. He absorbs the qualities and characteristics from those objects on which he sheds his love. Thus if he loves dust—such as material thirst, or the sensual, like the body, or the intellectual, being the mind—the substance and realities of his experience will be of the quality of the object he loves, human or otherwise. On the other hand if man focuses his love upon the majesty and beauty of the universe, and develops higher desires, which have no other aim except the satisfaction gained from the joy and appreciation of these objects, he will find the reality of truth. This is the experience of “non-death”

And lastly from my beautiful partner and fellow Bhakta Nyck, written to me on Valentine’s Day 2007;

Beyond words
Love
Beyond concepts
Love
Beyond philosophies
Love
Beyond judgements
Love
Beyond dreams
Love
Even Beyond self
Love
All things fall on bent knees in the worship of
Love
Which then encompasses all things
And expands to fill the world

Photos of Gurus by Alan Finger www.ishtayoga.com

Yoga and the Brain

2007-02-25T14:29:00.000+11:00

What I love about Yoga is that it is a Science. Science is all about experimentation, testing and retesting theories and working with models. When I practice, my yoga mat becomes a laboratory and my mind and body the experiment. This week I am fascinated by the inner workings of the mind and more specifically the brain. I have read several articles this week that state quite convincingly that the brain is the source of all our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experiences. These articles propose that because everything is in our brain, an outside ‘God’ might not exist. However in my opinion if everything is in our brain and everything we experience comes from there, then how lucky and magnificent are we as humans to have such a palette of creative colour at our disposal. We create the very stars we wish upon in the night sky. To me this is the essence of Tantra, which says that everything we experience is divine. We are one with everything right now and right here; it’s just that we have forgotten this, or are unable to see the whole picture.

My teacher Alan Finger shares in his classes that in daily life we operate from a limited perspective. If we view life from this limited perspective our experiences will be limited. If we learn to look at life from the big picture then everything is radiantly alive and full of joy and possibility. Yogic Science gives us methods and models for seeing the big picture while giving us practical tools to help us to expand our limited view. What’s really cool is that modern Science is discovering what the yogis have been telling us all along – that the mystery of us is not so mysterious after all. The answer is in our brains if we care to look.

One fascinating article entitled ‘Tracing the Synapses of Spirituality’ By Shankar Vedantam, a Washington Post Staff Writer, asks; “What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? It could be the decreased activity in the brain's parietal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of self and physical orientation, research suggests. How does religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion? Possibly because of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by heightened concentration during meditation. Why do many people have a profound sense that religion has changed their lives? Perhaps because spiritual practices activate the temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal significance.”

This prompts me to reflect on my understanding of yoga philosophy and the theory that everything is Brahman – Divine intelligence. Out of that intelligence there is a split, which we call Shiva and Shakti (Shiva being consciousness and Shakti being energy). Science suggests that we have Brahman in the brain and that our left and right brains gives us the sense of duality. What we don't know is how we go from the experience of being one to the experience of being two.

In yoga we say that Maya (illusion) enables us to experience the one as two. The word Maya literally means ‘to measure out’. We create a sense of distance between things so that we can see ourselves as separate from them. Out of this sense of separation comes the illusion of time and space which leads to the need for memory so we can see things as having a past, present and future. This then gives us the sense that we are born and that we die. But why does all this happen in the first place? What drives the split?

In yoga we call it Iccha Shakti (pure desire). As human beings, desire moves us to change and grow and learn. Desire is manifested in our inherent nature. As babies we desire the nipple for sustenance, and our desire grows to include desire for relationships, creative expression, love, truth and the longing to know who we are. This journey of desire manifests in an individual and is determined by the specific make up of their brain. Our DNA is uniquely encoded and influenced by the brains of others. Science and Yoga suggests that our set patterns can be changed, by altering our own chemistry through certain practices and experiences. The yogis used words like Karma to describe our set genetic coding and dharma to describe the experience of interacting with other brains in a controlled environment of our own making. The dance of the two in Tantra is called Lila.

And what am I trying to say here anyway? If it’s all in my brain and I am the creator of my universe and I have everything I need at my disposal, why practice at all? For me it's the desire to remember on a daily basis who I am, and simply for the sheer joy of experimentation.

Read on if your brain wants some fascinating food!!

The Brain and Meditation

In an article by Adithya K. on “The Brain and Meditation” he states that:

“The brain is essential to human life, and when the brain dies, the entire physical body dies with it. Even in deep sleep the brain is active and aware, and able to direct functions as and when necessary. For example, the brain may create a fearful dream to wake you up if your body is threatened by danger, such as a lack of oxygen due to a difficulty in breathing. The central function of the human brain is awareness. Awareness is required to know things like boundaries, size, limits, identifications, and the sense of self and the sense of the other. Awareness itself has no intrinsic size, boundary limits, or any other attributes of its own. Awareness is required to know all attributes, but awareness itself can be nothing but just plain awareness. That is the pure awareness of meditation.

The sense of time, the beginning and the end, the birth and the death, requires memory. Awareness always precedes memory. Awareness serves as the background and base for memory, but memory cannot have any trace of the beginning or end of awareness. This makes awareness feel eternal no matter what the reality.

We experience everything in our brain: sound, vision, smell, taste, touch, temperature, pleasure, pain, reason, and emotion. Everything we feel and see are signals presented inside the brain, from neuron to neuron, in a web of billions of brain cells. When you look at images of distant stars and galaxies, those pictures are formed inside us, not outside of us. When you realign your focus on the background of consciousness during meditation, you clearly see that all outside images are really inside images.
Scientists now understand through functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (fMRI scans) that the part of the brain, which gives us, a sense of location in time and space is less active during intense meditation. With no sense of location, consciousness loses its boundaries and subjectively feels infinite and timeless. The body may seem to completely disappear, leaving only pure consciousness in its place. That is death of the 'I.' During deep dreamless sleep, the same dissolution of the 'I' happens, but there is no consciousness to experience it.

The feeling of clutter we often feel inside ourselves is the brain working too hard, thinking too many thoughts. The pragmatic working brain requires concentration on the utilitarian tasks of life. In meditation, peace and relaxation rule, and the brain doing nothing expands its sense of being into the whole universe. Only the core, essential life saving functions of the brain continue during the deepest meditation.

Stress is the brain’s attempt to drive the body from one situation to another desired situation through the pathway of time. Thus, if you end desire, the acceptance of *what is* brings an end to stress and creates the sensation of eternal timelessness. When the brain uproots its self-created need to do work, there is total relaxation and peace. Finally, the brain is at ease and resting in its essential being.

The sensation *I am body* is itself an effort of the brain. Brain is our intimate personal reality, not the body. The brain is able to conjure up the idea of the body by repeated practice and focus. The brain can easily convince itself of being anything it wants. After all, there is no one else inside you to question it. The brain is the one that says “I am this!,” as well as being the final arbitrator of its own validity.

Some may focus on a flower and convince themselves that they have experienced "flower consciousness." Others go further and convince themselves that they are a great saviour, saint, or a heroic world leader. Given enough focus and practice, the brain can convince itself of anything, because the brain is the final judge and jury of our perception of reality. Thus, we all live in different brain worlds of our own creation. When those brain worlds collide, conflict and wars arise.

The feeling of solidity of the body is generated by the brain constantly sending and receiving signals to and from different organs. The more frequent and stronger the signals, the more solid the body feels. Mediation is a way to relax the brain and quiet down its constant communication with the body and reduce the frequency of thoughts. As the brain relaxes and creates less activity and noise, the feeling *I am the body* starts to dissolve.”

Is our Wiring is Predetermined?
The following article suggests that the brain determines who we are and how we behave and that our upbringing and experiences are like layers on a pre -existing cake. In yoga we would call this the play of our karma- the seeds or tendencies that have been planted in us with our dharma- the events that are destined to come towards us for us to work out our karma

Is Chemistry Destiny?
(Article in the International Herald Tribune, 19.09.2007, by David Brooks)

Louanne Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist and the founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic in San Francisco. She has written a breezy – maybe too breezy – summary of hundreds of studies on the neurological differences between men and women: ‘The Female Brain’.

All human beings, she writes, start out with a brain that looks female. But around the 8th week in the womb, testosterone surges through male brains, killing cells in some regions (communications) and growing cells in others (sex and aggression).

By the time they are 3 months old, girls are, on average, much better at making eye contact with other people and picking up information from faces. During play, girls look back at their mothers, on average, 10 to 20 times more than boys, to check for emotional signals. Girls can also, on average, hear a broader range of sounds in the human voice, and can better discern changes in tone.

Later, girls are much more likely to use sentences that begin with “let’s” while playing: Let’s do this or Let’s do that. They are more likely to take turns. Brizendine argues that of course culture and environment powerfully shape behaviour, but brain structure and chemistry incline girls to pursue certain goals: “To forge connections, to create community, and to organize and orchestrate a girl’s world so that she’s at the centre of it.”

During adolescence, the female brain is washed in estrogen. Female teenagers, in general, experience an intense desire for social connection, which releases near-orgasmic rushes of oxytocin in the brain. They are, on average, more sensitive to stress (by age 15, girls are twice as likely to suffer from depression). The male brain, meanwhile, is producing 10 times more testosterone then the female brain, meaning the male sex drive is, on average, much greater.

Brizendine then destribes waves of hormonal activity as women age. Female brains vary with the seasons of life much more than male brains. During menopause, for example, estrogen levels drop. Personalities can change as some women derive less pleasure from nurturing and more from independence. Women initiate 65 percent of divorces after age 50.

These sorts of sex differences were once highly controversial, and not fit for polite conversation. And some feminists still argue that talking about biological differences between the sexes is akin to talking about biological differences between the races. But Brizandine’s feminist bona fide are unquestionable. And in my mostly liberal urban circle – and among this book’s reviewers – almost everybody takes big biological differences as a matter of course.

Without too much debate or even awareness, there has been a gigantic shift in how people think human behaviour is formed.

Consider all the theories put forward to explain personality. Freud argued that early family experiences relating to defecation and genital stimulation created unconscious states that influenced behaviour through life. In the 1950s, the common view was that humans begin as nearly blank slates and that behaviour is learned through stimulus and response. Over the ages, thinkers have argued that humans are divided between passion and reason, or between the angelic and the demonic.

But now the prevailing view is that brain patterns were established during the millenniums when humans were hunters and gatherers, and we live with the consequences. Now, it is generally believed, our behaviour is powerfully influenced by genes and hormones. Our temperaments are shaped by whether we happened to be born with the right mix of chemicals.

Consciousness has come to be seen as this relatively weak driver, riding atop an organ, the brain, it scarcely understands. When we read that males voles (a small rodent) with longer vasopressin genes are more likely to remain monogamous, it seems plausible that so fundamental a quality could be tied to some discrete bit of biology.

This shift in how we see human behaviour is bound to have huge effects. Freudianism encouraged people to think about destroying inhibitions. This new understanding both validates ancient stereotypes about the sexes, and fuzzes up moral judgments about human responsibility (biology inclines individuals toward certain virtues and vices).

Once radicals dreamed of new ways of living, but now happiness seems to consist of living in harmony with the patterns that nature and evolution laid down long, long ago.

Our brains are designed to be social !
The following excerpt is by Daniel Coleman from his book “Social Intelligence” In it he shares that what we think and feel affects those around us and that social interaction keeps our brains young. After reading this I understood why meditating and learning together brings about such profound transformations.

Our brains are designed to be social, says bestselling science writer
Daniel Goleman—and they catch emotions the same way we catch colds

Have you ever wondered why a stranger’s smile can transform your entire day? Why your eyes mist up when you see someone crying, and the sight of a yawn can leave you exhausted? Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., has wondered, too

For the first time in history, thanks to recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, experts are able to observe brain activity while we’re in the act of feeling—and their findings have been astonishing. Once believed to be lumps of lonely grey matter cogitating between our
ears, our brains turn out to be more like inter looped, Wi-Fi octopi with invisible tentacles slithering in all directions, at every moment, constantly picking up messages we’re not aware of and prompting reactions—including illnesses—in ways never before understood.

“The brain itself is social—that’s the most exciting finding,” Goleman explains during lunch at a restaurant near his home in Massachusetts. “One person’s inner state affects and drives the other person. We’re forming brain-to-brain bridges—a two-way
traffic system—all the time. We actually catch each other’s emotions like a cold.”

The more important the relationship, the more potent such “contagion” will be. A stranger’s putdown may roll off your back, while the same zinger from your boss is devastating. “If we’re in toxic relationships with people who are constantly putting
us down, this has actual physical consequences,” Goleman says. Stress produces a harmful chemical called cortisol, which interferes with certain immune cell functions. Positive interactions prompt the body to secrete oxytocin (the same chemical released during lovemaking), boosting the immune system and decreasing stress
hormones. As a doting grandparent himself (with author-therapist wife Tara Bennett-Goleman), the author often feels this felicitous rush. “I was just with my two-year-old granddaughter,” he says. “This girl is like a vitamin for me. Being with her actually feels like a kind of elixir. The most important people in our lives can be our biological allies.”

The notion of relationships as pharmaceutical is a new concept. “My mother is 96,” Goleman goes on. “She was a professor of sociology whose husband—my father—died many years ago, leaving her with a big house. After retiring at 65, she decided to let graduate students live there for free. She’s since had a long succession of housemates. When she was 90, a couple from Taiwan had a baby while they were living there. The child regarded her as Grandma and lived there till the age of two. During that time, I swore I could see my mother getting younger. It was stunning.” But not, he adds,
completely surprising. “This was the living arrangement we were designed for remember? For most of human history there were extended families where the elderly lived in the same household as the babies. Many older people have the time and nurturing energy that kids crave— and vice versa. If I were designing assisted-living facilities, I’d
put daycare centers in them and allow residents to volunteer. Institutions are cheating children,” he says. “And we older people need it, too.”

Positive interactions can boost the immune system. Young or old, people can affect our personalities. Though each of us has a distinctive temperament and a “set point of happiness” modulating our general mood, science has now confirmed that these
tendencies are not locked in. Anger-prone people, for example, can “infect” themselves with calmness by spending time with mellower individuals, absorbing less-aggressive behavior and thereby sharpening social intelligence.

A key to understanding this process is something called mirror neurons: “neurons whose only job is to recognize a smile and make you smile in return,” says Goleman (the same goes for frowning another reactions). This is why, when you’re smiling, the whole world
does indeed seem to smile with you. It also explains the Michelangelo phenomenon, in which long-term partners come to resemble each other through facial-muscle mimicry and “empathic resonance.” If you’ve ever seen a group with a case of the giggles, you’ve
witnessed mirror neurons at play. Such mirroring takes place in the realm of ideas, too, which is why sweeping cultural ideals and prejudices can spread through populations with viral speed.

This phenomenon gets to the heart of why social intelligence matters most: its impact on suffering and creating a less crazy world. It is critical, Goleman believes, that we stop treating people as objects or as functionaries who are there to give us something. This can
range from barking at telephone operators to the sort of old-shoe treatment that long-term partners often use in relating to each other (talking at, rather than to, each other). We need, he says, a richer human connection.

Unfortunately, what he calls the “inexorable technocreep” of contemporary culture threatens such meaningful connection. Presciently remarking on the TV set in 1963, poet T.S. Eliot noted that this techno-shredder of the social fabric “permits millions of
people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.” We can only imagine what the dour writer would have made of Internet dating. And as Goleman points out, this “constant digital connectivity” can deaden us to the people around us. Social intelligence, he says, means putting down your BlackBerry, actually paying full attention—showing people that they’re being experienced—which is basically what each of us wants more than anything. Scientists agree that such connection—or lack of it—will
determine our survival as a species: “Empathy,” writes Goleman, “is the prime inhibitor of human cruelty.”

And our social brains are wired for kindness, despite the gore you may see on the nightly news. “It’s an aberration to be cruel,” says Goleman. Primitive tribes learned that strength lay in numbers, and that their chances of surviving a brutal environment increased
exponentially through helping their neighbors (as opposed to, say, chopping their heads off). Even young children are wired for compassion. One study in Goleman’s book found that infants cry when they see or hear another baby crying, but rarely when they hear
recordings of their own distress. In another study, monkeys starved themselves after realizing that when they took food, a shock was delivered to their cage mate.

Perhaps the most inspiring piece of the social-intelligence puzzle is neuroplasticity: the discovery that our brains never stop evolving. “Stem cells manufacture 10,000 brain cells every day till youdie,” says Goleman. “Social interaction helps neurogenesis. The
brain rises to the occasion the more you challenge it.

Tracing the Synapses of Spirituality
A look at the nature of religion and spirituality and its origins in our brain!
By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer
June 17th, 2001 — In Philadelphia, a researcher discovers areas of the brain that are activated during meditation. At two other universities in San Diego and North Carolina, doctors study how epilepsy and certain hallucinogenic drugs can produce religious epiphanies. And in Canada, a neuroscientist fits people with magnetized helmets that produce "spiritual" experiences for the secular.

The work is part of a broad new effort by scientists around the world to better understand religious experiences, measure them, and even reproduce them. Using powerful brain imaging technology, researchers are exploring what mystics call nirvana, and what Christians describe as a state of grace. Scientists are asking whether spirituality can be explained in terms of neural networks, neurotransmitters and brain chemistry.

What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? It could be the decreased activity in the brain's parietal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of self and physical orientation, research suggests. How does religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion? Possibly because of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by heightened concentration during meditation. Why do many people have a profound sense that religion has changed their lives? Perhaps because spiritual practices activate the temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal significance.

"The brain is set up in such a way as to have spiritual experiences and religious experiences," said Andrew Newberg, a Philadelphia scientist who authored the book "Why God Won't Go Away." "Unless there is a fundamental change in the brain, religion and spirituality will be here for a very long time. The brain is predisposed to having those experiences and that is why so many people believe in God."

The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain research. But depending on your religious beliefs, it may also be the last straw. For while Newberg and other scientists say they are trying to bridge the gap between science and religion, many believers are offended by the notion that God is a creation of the human brain, rather than the other way around.

"It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion appear useless," said Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. "If you can explain religious experience purely as a brain phenomenon, you don't need the assumption of the existence of God."

Some scientists readily say the research proves there is no such thing as God. But many others argue that they are religious themselves, and that they are simply trying to understand how our minds produce a sense of spirituality.

Newberg, who was catapulted to center stage of the neuroscience-religion debate by his book and some recent experiments he conducted at the University of Pennsylvania with co-researcher Eugene D'Aquili, says he has a sense of his own spirituality, though he declined to say whether he believed in God because any answer would prompt people to question his agenda. "I'm really not trying to use science to prove that God exists or disprove God exists," he said.

Newberg's experiment consisted of taking brain scans of Tibetan Buddhist meditators as they sat immersed in contemplation. After giving them time to sink into a deep meditative trance, he injected them with a radioactive dye. Patterns of the dye's residues in the brain were later converted into images.

Newberg found that certain areas of the brain were altered during deep meditation. Predictably, these included areas in the front of the brain that are involved in concentration. But Newberg also found decreased activity in the parietal lobe, one of the parts of the brain that helps orient a person in three-dimensional space.

"When people have spiritual experiences they feel they become one with the universe and lose their sense of self," he said. "We think that may be because of what is happening in that area – if you block that area you lose that boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In doing so you ultimately wind up in a universal state."

Across the country, at the University of California in San Diego, other neuroscientists are studying why religious experiences seem to accompany epileptic seizures in some patients. At Duke University, psychiatrist Roy Mathew is studying hallucinogenic drugs that can produce mystical experiences and have long been used in certain religious traditions.

Could the flash of wisdom that came over Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha – have been nothing more than his parietal lobe quieting down? Could the voices that Moses and Mohammed heard on remote mountain tops have been just a bunch of firing neurons – an illusion? Could Jesus's conversations with God have been a mental delusion?

Newberg won't go so far, but other proponents of the new brain science do. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, has been conducting experiments that fit a set of magnets to a helmet-like device. Persinger runs what amounts to a weak electromagnetic signal around the skulls of volunteers.

Four in five people, he said, report a "mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits.

"That's in the laboratory," said Persinger. "They know they are in the laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened late at night in a pew or mosque or synagogue?"

His research, said Persinger, showed that "religion is a property of the brain, only the brain and has little to do with what's out there."

Those who believe the new science disproves the existence of God say they are holding up a mirror to society about the destructive power of religion. They say that religious wars, fanaticism and intolerance spring from dogmatic beliefs that particular gods and faiths are unique, rather than facets of universal brain chemistry.

"It's irrational and dangerous when you see how religiosity affects us," said Matthew Alper, author of "The God Part of the Brain," a book about the neuroscience of belief. "During times of prosperity, we are contented. During times of depression, we go to war. When there isn't enough food to go around, we break into our spiritual tribes and use our gods as justification to kill one another."

While Persinger and Alper count themselves as atheists, many scientists studying the neurology of belief consider themselves deeply spiritual.

James Austin, a neurologist, began practicing Zen meditation during a visit to Japan. After years of practice, he found himself having to re-evaluate what his professional background had taught him.

"It was decided for me by the experiences I had while meditating," said Austin, author of the book "Zen and the Brain" and now a philosophy scholar at the University of Idaho. "Some of them were quickenings, one was a major internal absorption – an intense hyper-awareness, empty endless space that was blacker than black and soundless and vacant of any sense of my physical bodily self. I felt deep bliss. I realized that nothing in my training or experience had prepared me to help me understand what was going on in my brain. It was a wake-up call for a neurologist."

Austin's spirituality doesn't involve a belief in God – it is more in line with practices associated with some streams of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both emphasize the importance of meditation and its power to make an individual loving and compassionate – most Buddhists are disinterested in whether God exists.

But theologians say such practices don't describe most people's religiousness in either eastern or western traditions.

"When these people talk of religious experience, they are talking of a meditative experience," said John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University. "But religion is more than that. It involves commitments and suffering and struggle – it's not all meditative bliss. It also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God."

"Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is symbolism and myth and story and much richer things. They have isolated one small aspect of religious experience and they are identifying that with the whole of religion."

Belief and faith, argue believers, are larger than the sum of their brain parts: "The brain is the hardware through which religion is experienced," said Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist who studies the effect of religion on people. "To say the brain produces religion is like saying a piano produces music."

At the Fuller Theological Seminary's school of psychology, Warren Brown, a cognitive neuropsychologist, said, "Sitting where I'm sitting and dealing with experts in theology and Christian religious practice, I just look at what these people know about religiousness and think they are not very sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but they are not scholars in the area of what is involved in various forms of religiousness."

At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is what one theologian at St. Louis University called the "nothing-butism" of some scientists – the notion that all phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic units that could be measured.

"A kiss," said Michael McClymond, "is more than a mutually agreed-upon exchange of saliva, breath and germs."

And finally, say believers, if God existed and created the universe, wouldn't it make sense that he would install machinery in our brains that would make it possible to have mystical experiences?

"Neuroscientists are taking the viewpoints of physicists of the last century that everything is matter," said Mathew, the Duke psychiatrist. "I am open to the possibility that there is more to this than what meets the eye. I don't believe in the omnipotence of science or that we have a foolproof explanation."

Present poem

2007-01-29T21:33:00.000+11:00

I am nobody
I have no story
No history
When you speak to me I am the moment
Interesting as itself
My present is your present
And the practice is that
The teacher is that
It does not matter
What has happened
What I thought
Who I thought I was
What I thought happened
All gone
Wiped out by now
Right now

Meditate
Deeply
The waves of now
An ocean of nothing

Its is only a small
cake of desire
that forces me to tell
some story of what has happened

the desire that shaped the world
the desire that flings me like a stone from some
past picture to some future hope
and misses the now
which waits so patiently
to be embraced

by me

Photo by A. Andrew Gonzalez at www.sublimatrix.com

The Sadhana of Pain and Bliss

2007-01-17T18:22:00.000+11:00

They say that to live yoga one combines knowledge and experience, which ultimately leads to higher wisdom. In yoga higher wisdom is called Buddhi. Buddhi is like a light that always shines down on us. It is filled with insight and a deep sense of peace. When we are clear and truly connected to Buddhi then life just flows. When we are stuck in our heads, trying hard to work something out then it is impossible for us to tune to our Buddhi. For me, higher wisdom and truth aren't neccesarily always love and 'ducks and geese', as my teacher Alan Finger puts it. Sometimes we're being shown through a deep life experience how much life hurts and how hard it is to let go of a fixed viewpoint.

For me tapping into states of pain and anger has freed me to understand myself and others more deeply. Today a friend called to talk to me about her anger she was having trouble accepting that she was flying off the handle at little unimportant things. I shared with her that I had been angry all my life and actually enjoyed my anger because it gave me a sense of power. When I am angry its often because I feel out of control and so I act out of control to get control. Makes perfect sense until one starts to have a consistent meditation practice. In meditation we learn to watch our breath and then our thoughts, and then draw deeper to our source through mantra and focused concentration practices. In this state of watching it becomes obvious that when anger begins to arise it is just an emotion or rather a small spark that has not yet wielded its full potential. From the perspective of wisdom the greatest power comes from dousing the flame before it can become a raging fire. But this is the challenge and in the west especially we are asked to beat pillows, cry and scream, and live it out so it is released. Have you ever noticed how expressing anger never seems to release it? When you power up anger it's just like plugging into an electric socket, it just runs 24/7 if you let it.

After nearly a month of living in both anger and pain and expressing it as much as I can, I have come to the end of my rope. All I have to show for all this expression is an exhausted mind and body that longs to rest. The only insight I have had is that it's never ending and that my best course of action has been to turn to the practice I know so well: Observing my emotions as they arise and watching how they fall away just as quickly.

Until recently I really thought I was an expert at self observation but then through a deeply shocking experience I have had to feel things I have been surpressing for most of my adult life, and in that I have discovered incredible states of bliss and freedom. I have realised I can handle a lot more pain in my heart then I thought possible and that I am much stronger and braver then I thought. Now when someone shares a deeply painful experience, I feel that I have true compassion for the situation.

It reminds me of the time that I was pregnant and teaching yoga . I kept sharing with the students how it would feel to give birth and how they could use their practice and their breathing to work through the pain. Then I actually gave birth and felt embarassed at all the things I had said to my students. There is no way you can be prepared for birth, there is no way you can prepare for a sudden shocking loss... noone can prepare you for any experiences you may have as all experiences are so deeply personal. The beautiful thing is that once you do have an experience you can grow from it and it leads you towards wisdom.

In yoga we can get very involved in our meditation experiences. We can see lights and colors and feel energy and see deities and think we have reached some perfect state of union. The reality is that often these states are merely just side effects of practice. True experience occurs when we move to a state of nothingness. Often we cannot share or explain these experiences as our small self (jiva atman) merges with our big self (paramatman) and there is nothing to say...and again these things are what lead us to wisdom in our practice.

In a recent conversation with my teacher Alan Finger about experiences and making them special through words and stories he shared the following "All that is real is the moment, the rest is dreams and words. Everything is Karma at work, so don't let the words make it special, all that is special is riding the wave of Karma, in love with the moment and sharing it with
life."

Heres to riding all the waves, be they painful or blissful...

Om shanti Sundara

The Gunas

2006-12-16T12:56:00.000+11:00

We are made up of energy. A magnetic web of currents that spiral and spin, in every moment our brain and body are communicating and in every moment our subtle body is also expanding and contracting. We are a mystery in motion.

Yoga is a science and every science involves experiments to understand the nature of reality. So in Yoga practice the brain is the scientist and the body is the experiment.In order to understand the nature of our body yogic science asks us to believe that we are infinite and concentrated. That we are everything and nothing and that from this state we radiate like rays of the sun touching and sparking everything so that the universe and the stars and the planets and we as nature are manifest.

As this happens both in the macrocosm and the microcosm energy passes through specific phases and states. We move from a void space- like being in the womb as a baby- to a state of growth and activity- as the developing and growing child- to a balanced state of wisdom and intelligence in the mature adult.

These three moving states in Yoga are called the GUNAS, which can be defined as “spiralling vortices of vibrating energy fields” or inherent qualities in nature. They move from a neutral phase ; Sattva ( balance and purity) to a positive phase :Rajas (creative activity) to a negative phase :Tamas( inertia and the point where spirit crystallises into pure matter) When someone dies the body decomposes and returns to the earth and the spirit is set free. In this way Tamas is both the densest form of energy and that, which can free the spirit from the body returning it to its pure sattvic state.

Imagine it like this; The positive pole Rajas and the negative pole Tamas spin around a neutral centre Sattva. In normal life when we are active and creative we are rajasic. Our negative pole Tamas can act like a stabilising force creating a polarity for the excitability of Rajas. The inhale is rajasic it takes us up and out and the exhale is tamasic drawing us down and in…In yoga practice we can learn to cultivate sattva, a neutral space which allows for our activity and for our passivity, to promote a state of active balance.

Tamas
Tamas is solidity, the literal definition being inertia. When we are overly heavy in mind, body and attitudes we are said to be Tamasic. Yogananda shares that the three Gunas can be envisioned as a wave. The wave closest to the centre of the ocean is Sattva, the crest is Rajas and the part that hits the shore is Tamas. What’s ironic is that as soon as the wave hits the shore it is drawn back again to the deepest part of the ocean… In other words everything solid is Tamasic yet the solidity is a temporary illusion because life can transform to the subtlest in an instant.

An apple is real…
When we eat the fruit it converts to energy in our system which creates activity as digestion (rajas), it nourishes us so that we feel more balanced (sattvic) and we eliminate what we don’t need through excretion, through the elements of earth and water (tamasic). What seemed solid when we began eating transforms into earth and water in a matter of hours. This is called the principle of continuity.

The gunas tend to appear stable for a period of time but then transform into each other through the passage of time or through circumstance. Tamas is represented as the night….but night turns to morning, as Rajas, to daylight as Sattva and at sunset to Rajas and then back into the night as Tamas.

This is mirrored in our bodies in the fact that we sleep and are inactive at night and more active during the day. What’s beautiful about purifying and balancing our systems through yoga practice is that we can cultivate an awareness of our natural rhythms; resting when we are naturally tired and being active without draining our selves.

Rajas
The moment you think you encounter Rajas. Rajas means” to glow “When we think a light bulb goes off in our heads. We create heat and sparks with our thoughts. Rajas is the spark that lights the flame and as such it is outward moving, passionate, excited, vital and transformative. That's why thoughts are so powerful as a creative tool.

Rajas is the spark that ignites the varied forms and expressions in the universe. It is pure energy. When we practice we generate energy, we connect with energy and we strive to balance our energy.

What brings energy in? Breath… what sends our energy spinning out of control? Taking on too much, eating foods that imbalance us, not allowing for enough rest and play.

When we are Rajasic in our lifestyle it means we have started to generate too much heat and that natural creative glow becomes a fire out of control. It burns up our nervous system and depletes us. When our thoughts are overly rajasic we can have insomnia and obsessive compulsive tendencies.

We can look at our own stages of development to understand rajas a bit better. When we are babies we are generally sattvic. There is a purity in a baby, you can smell it coming from their crown. As a baby becomes a toddler we see rajas in action. It’s reflected in their speed, their questions and the inability to stop and be with one thing. Then as a teenager we are more tamasic, sleeping for 12 hrs a day, feeling inward and generally inert…As we grow into our young adult hood we become more rajasic again, diving into life and its challenges, studying, relationships, work and then as we move into the latter stage of life there is a need for balance and we strive towards more sattvic ways of being.

Like a wave falling to shore and drawing back the cycles never stop. In focussing in on Rajas however we can acknowledge our creativity and intelligence and how that intelligence sparks inner awareness.

Sattva
The word sattva contains the word Sat, which refers to the universal intelligence that sustains all existence. The sattvic energy field is most apparent when we are feeling harmonious, balanced, open, light and available to the moment. A sattvic person is attractive, healthy, graceful and charismatic. The quality of Sattva attunes us to love and directs our energy back to its source.

When we are Sattvic we are most attuned to the soul, which in yoga is called the “Atman”. The Atman is our soul or the individual drop of the ocean of intelligence called “ Brahman”. What separates the drop from the ocean is our karma. Karma means action and are the actions and reactions we have to the events that inspire us to grow. When we are most balanced we are tuned into what decisions and choices are right for us.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a time when you were really happy and everything just flowed; now remember your actions and reactions in that moment and distil the feeling…
Picture a stressful time and notice a change in your response…

Just in these simple few moments of reflection you can sense that in a balanced state life flows and in an imbalanced state there is stress (Rajas) or an inability to shift (Tamas).

Sattva relates more to the mind, to higher mind, which in yoga is called “Buddhi”. It’s your inspiration and intuition guiding you. Becoming more sattvic will enhance your life and your interactions with others.

To become more sattvic we want to work towards purity of the body and the mind. More specifically Ayurveda addresses the physical body through diet and the mental/emotional body through becoming aware of the emotional states. The gunas show that we move from a Tamasic to a Rajasic to a Sattvic state. Understanding the nature of foods and their qualities can support us to become more pure in our diet, understanding the nature of our emotions can help us to become more balanced in the heart and mind.

Heavy foods are Tamasic, spicy foods and junk foods are Rajasic, neutral foods, like vegetables, fruits and grains are sattvic.
Emotions like depression are Tamasic, anger Rajasic and love and peace Sattvic.
The main thing to grasp in practice is to become aware of your approach to asana both physically and emotionally. If you are intensely overworking, you may be too rajasic. If you flop around and don’t activate muscles you may be too tamasic, however if you strive to wards muscular effort and present relaxation you are more likely to find your inner balance.

In yoga it is said that there are 72,000 channels that direct energy or prana in the body. In yoga we focus on three of these channels and they relate directly to Rajas, Tamas and Sattva

In meditation there is a natural upward flow of energy this is shakti ascending on the rajasic current of the inhale. That passage way is called Ida. Ida in ancient greek mythology is the name of a mountain and in Sanskrit it means libation and is sometimes expressed as the channel of comfort. The feminine is comforting and her qualities when soothing us cooling. Hence she is associated with the silver moon

In life there is a natural downward flow of energy, Siva descending on the tamasic current of the exhale. This passage way is called pingala and its is likened to molten lava flowing from a volcano. The word pingala means tawney channel and is also associated with the sun.. Siva is known as the destroyer, he breaks down the creative forces and turns them to dust. Siva is also associated with peace and consciousness. When we are freed from the physical in death it is said we return to being pure awareness.

In our bodies we are experience a sacred marriage as we inhale and exhale, the bridge between the two is said to be a central channel called the sushumna. This is the sattvic force. The yogi enters the sushumna on exhalation and then moves the awareness to the midbrain. In meditation as your breath slows down more and more you feel the pauses at the end of exhalation. So Siva ( awareness) and Shakti ( energy) unite to form a cosmic and intelligent child. ( Brahman) all knowledge and intelligence

Sacred Sound- The Power of Mantra Shakti

2006-10-29T14:52:00.000+11:00

I love to trawl through the internet sometimes just to look up a Sanskrit word or to follow up something I am teaching in my classes . I have just found a website that has two major works by Arthur Avalon the first western scholar to demystify Tantra. Arthur Avalon's real name was Sir John Woodruff and he was an English lawyer who served as chief justice on the high court in Calcutta . He also led a double life as a Sanskrit scholar and Hindu philosopher specifically exploring the mysteries of Tantra. Even though Sir John Woodruff interpreted tantric texts it is believed that his knowledge of Sanskrit was limited and he relied heavily on friends to support him in his work. In his first book Shakta and Shakti he admits that his pen name Arthur Avalon is really a collaboration between himself and the friends that supported him.

In spite of the fact that the works may be flawed or contradictory there are some incredible gems in his books. To read them you need patience and a highlighter but in my opinion if you are fascinated with Tantra and know a little bit about Yoga philosophy it can show you worlds within worlds.

So as not to totally overwhelm myself I picked the chapter in Shakta and Shakti on "Shakti as Mantra". This is a subject very dear to me at the moment as my husband and I have just produced an award winning CD of devotional chants and songs " Sita Ram" which are based on the mantras taught to me by my teacher Alan Finger. Not only have the mantras I learned helped to open my heart and heal me they have also inspired a deep inner transformation, which is still unfolding within me.

What follows are a few of my understandings based on what I read:

According to Arthur Avalon, the word Mantra comes from two words , man from "manana" which means thinking and tra from the root "trana" which means freedom from the world of samsara. In earlier chapters he shares that " tra" means to save... In other words Mantra employs the thinking mind and directs the thoughts in a way that both saves and liberates the soul.

Imagine if you were given an object and you had no idea what it was or how it worked. Mantra is like that, when you don't know how it works or what it's for it has no meaning. The yogis however understood the structure and evolution of our universe as a map of sacred vibration and so handed down age old instructions which are still used today to transform and expand our consciousness.

There were many different scriptures deseminated in ancient times and all these scriptures were said to work together like the parts of a body. One was not more highly regarded then another. It is interesting to note that the scriptures on Mantra represent the crown chakra and the connection to universal consciousness (Paramatman) whereas the Vedas related more to the individualised self (Jiva atman) which resides in the heart chakra, the Darshanas related to the 5 senses, the Puranas to the body and the Smritis to the limbs. This suggests that mantra is the thing that draws us back to the source of who we are whereas study of scripture and codes of behaviour give us tools for living in the world. Maybe this is just a fancy way of saying " Mantra Works" if you can read the instructions in the manual.

In Tantra sound is called Shabda, but Shabda isn't audible sound, it's the sound we can't hear. In order to hear sound in physical reality two things must strike together. When we talk, air strikes our vocal chords, a violin is played when the bow vibrates against the string. and the sound of water in a stream flows in around rocks and against itself. To hear sound we need a receiver, a giver and the space between the two. Its amazing now how two people can talk over huge distances without any wires.

In yoga audible sound, is said to be part of our physical body, as we internalise the sound it moves to our subtle body and then as we begin to merge with the sound it takes us back to the causal body , the place from which all existence emerges and returns ( the field of our karma sometimes referred to as the akashic records)

Sound creates every thing and sound takes us back to that source of creation. Sound though is really vibration and that vibration needs a start and an end point in order for it to be active. In Tantra these two reference points are Shiva and Shakti. Shiva hangs at home on the mountain top being still, while Shakti cartwheels about creating, creating, creating. It is only when she merges back into Shiva that vibration stops. Her vibration is so glorious so bright that she burns herself into everything including us and she is manifested as the desire to think and speak, ( iccha shakti), the longing for freedom ( kriya shakti) and the need to know who we are ( jnana shakti).

Mantra works when we combine words, longing and knowledge together. A sincere seeker will always discover the truth.

Mantra then is sound combined in certain ways to merge our minds with the divine. There are many sounds for the different manifestations of the divine... think of the image of shakti being in everything and everyone. In Tantra mantras are associated with a variety of deities. Deities being the personified forms of the diversity of energy in everything. In other words, Ganesh as the remover of obstacles is the energy in us that breaks through limitation. When we chant to Ganesh we literally become Ganesh.

The arrangement of the letters are important in a Mantra as each letter represents an aspect of the chosen deity, like when you say the name of a friend and it invokes a specific feeling and image. Mantras have been handed down from Guru to disciple over thousands of years. The Guru lights the flame of the mantra by his or her own understanding of the power of the mantra and its effect on his or her life.

Each mantra also carries a seed sound or Bija mantra. The most basic Bija mantra is OM... this is said to be the sound of all creation.... Om is the seed of all other mantras.

Whats common in all Bija mantras then is that they end with the letter " M". This represents the two points of dynamic tension ( Shiva and Shakti) The point before sound manifests where the two are also one. The other letters in the bija mantra represent the movement of Shakti or energy as she takes on form.

Here is an example for the seed sound of Laxmi which is Shrim;
SH= Laksmi
R= wealth
I = satisfaction
M carries the sound back to its source

How then does it all work. Well first a mantra must be given to you or be imbued with Shakti for it to have an effect. Mantras learned from books will not have the same vibration as a mantras taught to you by a teacher who has experienced its profound effects. Mantras sung in Kirtan and Bhajan produce a different feeling to a mantra given to you by an Ayurvedic practioner for healing. Perhaps a deeper understanding of how sound moves from its inception in the causal to its actualisation in the physical can help to demystify this.

In order to hear a sound, two things must strike against eachother. There is however another type of sound, which is " unstruck " the unstruck sound starts as a unified field of consciousness and then splits and splits until it becomes name and form ( sound and vibration). It is in this state of name and form that the physical body reveals the hidden power of the "unstruck sound" and brings it to the " struck sound". The unstruck sound is held in the causal realm at the base of the spine, in this state it is called " para". It is neither physical nor subtle rather the cause of sound itself, sound in its seed state. From there it begins to move to the subtle body and travels from the 1st to the 3rd chakra . Here it is called "Pashyanti". A subtle movement of sound with no specific direction which also relates to the mind... (our mind moves without focus if we let it). From the 3rd chakra it moves to the 4th chakra whose name Anahata means "unstruck sound". This unstruck sound is directed towards truth and understanding and is callled "Madhyama". That truth is then spoken in the physical realm of the throat and mouth as "Vaikhari" .

Its is said that first we chant the mantra out loud catching the vibration in the net of our throat, from there we internalise the mantra and it travels to our hearts. It is in this space that the heart begins to open. Once we chant the mantra internally for long enough it journeys to our solar plexus and begins to burn away at our ego and our sense of self. When the sound as a seed is ripened by the heat of the inner sun it plants itself at the base of our spine, in the causal garden of our soul. Here the seed has been purified and as such it is a rare flower that perfumes every layer of our being with eternal truth.

In my own understanding:
Mantras sung in Kirtan and Bhajan rest in the heart
Mantras used for healing live in the solar plexus and help to purify us
Mantras handed down through a specific lineage or from a teacher with shakti serve to transform our consciousness

and finally in the words of Arthur Avalon himself:

"Mantra is a power ( shakti) in the form of idea clothed with sound"

Who was Swami Nisreyasananda

2006-10-21T12:28:00.000+10:00

I have been hot on the trail of finding out more about the gurus that have inspired this beautiful ISHTA lineage. So far I have found books by Venkatesananda, books by Bharati and writings by Mani Finger, but the latest treasure has come to me in a most magical and inspiring way and for me the circle of welcoming these teachers into my own heart is complete.

After repreated internet searches without much result I happened upon a Vedanta site in Atlanta which had one book inspired by Swami Nisreyasananda. I decided to write to the head Swami there and ask if he knew of a way for me to find out more about Swami Nisreyasananda. He wrote back straight away with an address of a woman in South Africa who had been a long time student of the Swami and had many of his writings. I sent off a handwritten letter about 6 weeks ago and until last week had decided that my letter must have been lost.

Then just a few days ago I received a booklet in the mail entitled " Arise- Awake, The Clarion Call" It was a written tribute to the Swami on the 100th anniversary of his birth. In it there were many many tributes written by his students and collegues plus letters written by the Swami himself.

The next day I went to teach in the ISHTA system teachers training and the entire room was covered with flowers and paintings of flowers. ( The students practice bhakti yoga in the form of bringing beauty to our practice space each day) It was incredible because the night before I had read a prayer written by the Swami entitled "Showers of flowers". It was an honour to share with the students a direct quote from the booklet in our morning yoga class.

" Swamiji used to talk about making a handkerchief and painting or embroidering in the four corners peace, truth, free, full. The way one can use these words is to take them one at a time. For example 'peace'- and in the profoundest depth of our being understand that we are peace and feel it intensely and vividly. We then move on to 'love' and know ourselves as love; to 'free' and know ourselves as utterly unfettered and the principle of freedom; and then 'Full' we are the principle of abundance and fullness. Used in this way these words are a powerful source of comfort and release. "Courtesy of Shirley Roeloffze ( Germiston)

And the story continues because that night I received a letter from Mara Sapere who had sent me the booklet.

"Dear Rachel,
A lady phoned me about 3 weeks ago, saying that someone put a letter in her PO Box by mistake. This was your letter. I discontinued that box number six years ago. She was so kind as to look up my address and telephone number in the telephone directory and phoned me. Not only that, she actually brought the letter to me, she had to drive quite some distance in her car.

How wonderful God is! She could as well have replaced it in the right box number. All of which reinforces my belief in the infinite intelligence, the unknown knower, who knows what to do and does it at the right time as the right people."

You can imagine I was moved deeply by her letter and the rightness of the events that day. I would like to share now Swami Nisreyasnandas biography as written by the late Wendy Taylor, a devoted student and the Swami himself.

"Swami Nisreyasananda was born on the 14th of september 1899 in a house next to the Kali temple in Tichur, Kerala. He became very ill at an early age and it was expected that he would not live long.He was put on a diet of buttermilk and rocksalt. This and a very high mental attitude saw him outlive every member of his family. He passed gracefully on the 23rd of November 1991 at the ripe age of 92 years.

He matriculated at the age of of 15 and was held back for a year before being allowed to enter college. During this time he was the head of debating class and head of the football team where he learnt to kick the ball towards the least competitive position. This became part of his lifes philosophy- take the line of least resistance. Having completed a degree in economics he became a school teacher, teaching History of all subjects! He and two of his collegues pooled their money to buy a piece of land which is now the site of the famous Trichur Ramakrishna Ashram.

Swami Tapasyananda who held a high position in the Ramakrishna mission said to Swamiji when they met in India in 1990 " You have the ability to plant a seed and see it flourish" This is evident in India and Mauritus. At each of these places Swamiji spent fruitful energy and time establishing branches of the mission.

In 1954 he took a tour of Europe and Africa delivering no less then 120 lectures in 130 days- a feat of nearly a lecture a day.

From October 1959, after he established a centre in Salisbury, Rodesia he established a library and acquired properties living always as a guest with friends. When he was granted visas he would visit: Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and the Republic of South Africa ( this must have been the time he used to hang out with Mani and Alan)

The Swami's discourses were based on the Upanishads, Gita, Yoga sutras and books by western authors related to these texts. As a person he loved art, painting and drama in partcular. He practiced systematic yoga exercises throughout his life with this and his simple food habits he tried to keep himself physically fit to discharge his daily obligations."

And finally just one quote from many to come by the Swami

" The human personality is the multiple adaptor for the general current or life force called Prana."

The evolution of Love

2006-09-23T19:05:00.000+10:00

When the heart is open
Love is a poem
A poem struck like a bell
You feel it and hear it ringing for miles
But what is love
The connection
Between two things
And what is "in love"
If we are love
How can we be in love
Its a paradox
Yet the chemicals within us are so strong that as our hearts break free from the cage of our little self we absolutely believe that when we look at another that they are the object of our love - that we are separate to them and are "in" love with them.
But time is on our side... we age and grow "in" love we evolve "in" love until we find we were love all along.

"The formula for evolution is to take the word LIVE, reverse the spelling which gives EVIL. Now take that which causes evil, the letter "I", representing egotism, replace it with the letter "O", so that instead of LIVE you have LOVE. And LOVE spelt backwards is the beginning of evolution....it is the first half of evolution" Mani Finger

In the process of practicing yoga , especially after a long time I have discovered that the ordinary moments are much more exciting then the special ones, that love is a moving sculpture that is moulded by my own heart, and that love is wide open for interpretation...

A friend recently asked me if I believed in destiny...I answered , " yes " of course I do. But on reflecting on the question I actually believe that our destiny is to know that we are love. Life presents us with a moment by moment drama for us to GET this one true inescapable fact. The drama may be beautiful, it may be painful... but in the end...its just pure LOVE...

The Soul is a compass

2006-08-27T16:21:00.000+10:00

In the last week I have discovered some beautiful writings by Kavi Yogi Maharishi Shuddhananda Bharati who was one of the teachers who inspired the ISHTA System. Bharati was a spiritual advisor to Ghandi and was described by Tagore as the Shakespeare of India. He lived in silence for 25 years and wrote over 1000 books on topics such as philosophy, mysticism and hatha yoga . He spoke eight languages was connected to princes and presidents and remained incredibly humble during his 92 years of life. In his book " The Revelations of Saint Meikander" he shares some of the profound teachings of Siddhanta. Siddhanta is said to come from the Agamas. The Agamas were teachings similar to the Vedas. Veda means " the knowledge that leads man to the divine" and Vedanta teaches " thou are that, thou art Brahman so be that. "Agama means " divine approach." Its major path is Siddhanta. Siddhanta is also called Saivism and acknowledges the difficulty in " just being that." We are human after all. It is said that Agama was taught by Shiva to Parvarti and then to the saints. It is a Tantric path...

What inspired me in these sutras was the idea that:
The soul is neither the body, nor universal intelligence. It is like a needle on a compass. It is either drawn to experiences through the instrument of the body or drawn to universal intelligence.
The senses are the instrument of the soul. We can tune our instrument so that we can achieve perfect awareness of our consciousness. We can know that there is something peering out into the world from behind the glass of our eyes.
We cannot know what that is, as we can't turn in and look at ourselves, but we can at least be aware that we are not our thoughts, experiences and sensations.
For this awareness to know itself it must be drawn like a magnet by grace back to that universal intelligence.
As dancers in this realm of the senses our music can either be discordant and chaotic or pure and soul stirring. The more we stir the soul the less it looks through the looking glass and the more it turns back in on itself...
The more obstacles we create through our belief in suffering the less we can hear the sweet sounds of our instrument. The trick is to enjoy the dance and know that our soul longs to be drawn back. In a way all we have to do is surrender and trust in the pull of the divine. This is OM NAMO SHIVAYA...

photo by Alan Finger www.ishtayoga.com

Who was ISHTA yoga founder Kavi Yogiraj Mani Finger

2006-08-19T12:22:00.000+10:00

I have just discovered more about my teacher Alan Finger's
father and how he discovered and founded
with Alan, the System of ISHTA yoga.
Mani's spiritual name was:
Kavi Yogiraj Mani Finger
Kavi - minstrel poet who wandered from place to place proclaiming to his students about the ancient wisdom and power of yoga
Yogi raj- master of Yoga
Mani- Sanskrit for " Light"
Finger- ( English) we use this to point the way for others

Born in 1908, Mani met Ghandi at the age of four when visiting Mani's parents farm in South Africa. Ghandi patted him on the head and said, "He willl be a teacher and a philosopher" In 1946 he met Parmahansa Yogananda whilst on a business trip in Los Angeles and became interested in all aspects of Yoga. He went on to study with Sivananda in Rishikesh and was initiated by him as Yogi Raj in 1962. In 1971 Mani was initiated into Tantra by Tantric Yogi Maharaji Kavi Shuddhannada Yogi Bharati. Mani lectured, taught and ran a newspaper column in South Africa. He founded the " ISHTA method of teaching"( Integral school of Hatha and Tantric Arts) and taught teachers all over South Africa.

In an inspiring quote he says:
"When I meet a new pupil, his vibrations ask me?
Speak to me about the art of living
Speak to me about the beyond of stars and sun
speak to me about my destiny....my orginal face
and the organised chaos of motion
Speak about the grace of asana and the need to sit
Speak to me of loving
Intuitively I answer within:
What you ask for you have already answered
what you say is also in my mind
So I begin to understand that
your voice is merely another image of myself and my voice merely an image of yourself"
photo by Alan Finger www.ishtayoga.com

Raja Yoga- climbing the mountain

2006-08-10T20:41:00.000+10:00

The other day I found myself describing the last four limbs of raja yoga to a group of students in a way that I had never thought of before....

When we meditate its like being a mountain climber. At first we gather our resources, we remove distractions and prepare for the climb - pratyahara. Then we concentrate on the path so we do not loose our step... ( Dharana) As we near the peak the endorphins kick in and our ascent feels effortless... It seems easy to reach the top ( Dhyana) when we reach the top we can see the magnificance of the vista below. In climbing the mountain we master the mountain. We merge with the clear air and the view below ( samadhi)

Some of us are good at gathering our strength and some of us are able to concentrate on the path... sometimes everything flows effortlessly and sometimes our perspective enables us to feel one with our experiences...

We are the changers and the changeless....

Thoughts on Siva and Shakti

2006-07-30T08:55:00.000+10:00

Shakti
She dances
No matter what
She knows nothing of suffering

Siva he watches while tears fall
He cannot bear the dance
Yet he knows he must wait
For her return

But she is already there
Resting in his arms
Restless as a flame on a candle
He cannot keep her
He knows she is this wild dancing creatrix
Free as fire, light as the wind

She is a part of him like he is of her
Two sides of the same coin
One still...one alive with the play of the universe

Shakti dances
No matter what
She knows nothing of suffering

Our energy builds through our connection with stillness. In tantra stillness is symbolised by the energy of Shiva. Shiva meditating up on Mt Kailash, his eyes closed pondering the infinite nature of consciousness. Shiva however cannot exist on his own, he needs Shakti; Shakti is the energy of all creation and this is what Shiva contemplates, the beauty of Shakti, the multitudinous forms that all feed into the one.
These two qualities of Shakti and Shiva are represented in our own body as blood, Agni, the fiery rush of life through our body, it heats our digestion and creates psychic heat to burn away our avidya (ignorance) and reproductive fluid, Soma, the divine nectar that inspires life and feeds and nourishes our cells.

In life we are the natural expression of these two energies digestion, assimilation, reproduction, thinking, processing, creating etc. when does the mind and body stop? In deep sleep! We actually only get about 2.5 hrs of deep sleep a night that’s not much time… but it seems to be enough. In some yogic systems we can think of Shiva as representing a still point while Shakti is like a coil unwinding. In life the desire to move away from the centre is stronger then the desire to move back. We move back in sleep and move out in life. To build our energy we must move back to the stillness more often and this is achieved not only through a commitment to practice and observation of the breath and mental focus but through observing our habits and tendencies. If you have a habit of overdoing it, working hard, stressing out, it takes a great deal of work to break that habit. Maybe you spend years in therapy and self help workshops and still the tendency is there. Tantra likes to take the direct approach, using mantra and yantra to uproot the habit, using Shakti, physical energy, creative energy and mental energy to change the direction from moving out to moving in.

Talking about Sivananda

2006-07-18T16:29:00.000+10:00

One of my teacher's teachers was Swami Venkatesanada. Swami Venkatesanada was an amazing yogi and scholar. he travelled the world sharing his wisdom and inspired and touched many people from all walks of life. My teacher Alan Finger got to hang out with Venkatesananda while he was growing up in his father's ashram in South Africa. Alan always calls himself a cowboy yogi, he used to lie around half asleep when the babas and gurus like Venkatesananda were giving satsang. He says he spent half his time playing in his darkroom or fixing his motorbike. I am sure he took in more then he let on as he certainly shares a deep wisdom from those early years of yoga practice with his current students. I have spent the last few years on Venkatesanada's trail soaking up as many books and talks as I can find as I am fascinated by the lineage that Alan and his father were initiated into. I am currently reading his talks on his experience of hanging out with his Guru Swami Sivananda. One of the most beautiful stories in there is of the Maha Mrityunjaya mantra. This is a mantra for healing and wellbeing. What's beautiful about this mantra is that chanting it is a totally selfless act. When you chant for your self, to relieve your own suffering, or remove an obstacle there is some part of the ego involved, but when you chant for someone else ,you get out of the way, you forget about yourself... Alan taught me the maha mrityunjaya mantra years ago in New York. I was working with some private clients and noticed a warm feeling coming from the palms of my hands when I taught or put my hands on the students to adjust them. I asked him " what should I do" should I be focussing this energy in some way , directing it? He replied that there was nothing to DO, just to let it happen and let love flow through me and when chanting the mantra , just to sense the students opening to their own profound healing energy.
Healing has nothing to do with the healer...it is love moving through ... all we need to do is get out of our own way ... the mantra does this...
last night Nyck and I chanted this mantra over and over I chanted for peace and for all those friends and strangers that are unwell or suffering in someway...

Om Tryambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urvarukamiva Bandhanan
Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat

photo of Swami Venkatesanada from www.swamivenkatesananda.com

Yoga Philosophy in Tokyo

2006-07-12T11:48:00.000+10:00

I am in the steamy hot streets of Tokyo... well more in my hotel room in between my yoga philosophy lecture gig at Be Yoga Japan. Spoke for 5 hours about Tantra. Tantra a weaving together of magical threads, individual threads that hold a kaleidoscope of possibilities. In Tantra the carpet is woven yet the thread lives with the idea that its individual, its color shining brightly. This thread is choosing how it wants to play with the divine. One moment joy, another moment, suffering. How magnificent is the mind. The Japanese have the same word for heart and mind ( kokoro) To me it is saying; your mind is your heart and your heart is your mind. When your mind is clear and still, so is your heart. When your heart is open, so is your mind. Sometimes the mind gets cloudy... this can be a problem with our intelligence, but not the rational intelligence, divine intelligence. Its the mind that lives in our stomach. The senses take in everything, but its a lot to digest. If we have our heart in our mind the food of love passes through us and fertilises the soil of our lives. If our mind is in our heart and our heart is blocked then the energy of the mind lives in the solar plexus and immerses itself in the fire. When the fire is weak, the mind is dull, its hard to tune to our higher intelligence. When the fire is too strong it overheats the mind and a kind of madness ensues. Nothing can grow when the sun's heat scorches the earth.

at the moment my mind is cloudy... like the clouds that hang over Mount Fuji

Action and reaction

2006-07-03T16:34:00.000+10:00

stayed up last night buried in Venkatesananda's talks on Karma yoga and had a major breakthrough in my understanding of karma, vasana. samskara and dharma. So here goes, bear with me if your interested or just click on to a more lightweight blog.

Consciousness spirals out from a fixed point
This fixed point is called oneness or brahman
The spiraling out is the force of shakti's split from shiva
It is in our nature to feel like we are constantly pushing away from the center in this spiral arc or being pulled back to the centre
It is in our nature to want things, to take action, to attract pleasures into our lives, to have goals
This very action is the "pulling away from the centre"
Sleep is a returning to the centre, fatigue is our exhaustion from constant goal orientation
Karma therefore is the action we take to have what we desire
As we take action or rather shoot the arrow towards our goal an impression is left
This impression can be broken down into two things:
Vasana- deep unconscious habit or a scent that stains our fingers like inscence
Samskara- the way our particular personality expresses this vasana

As soon as the arrow hits its mark we react- this is a given
The reaction is often based on our Vasana- ( habit or tendency) and our Samskara (personality patterns) for instance: I insult you and you react
If you have the vasana( tendency) to be violent and you express that in your peronality as anger you may yell at me or hit me.The reaction is there but how you express it is based on your conditioning
If I insult you and you have the habit of "turning the other cheek" then that is how you will react and you will most probbaly express your reaction in a loving way
In yoga it is not important to notice the reaction- after all it is just a reenactment of your intial action which in turn creates more action
I insult you, you hit me I insult you again and so on and so on
Whats important is to root out the Vasana while aknowledging the Samskara

In modern day therapy we mainly adress our Samskaras- the personality issues
In yoga we can use Kriyas to burn up the Vasanas and purify ourselves or as my teacher Alan Finger puts it " bake the seeds until they pop and dissapear"

What then is Dharma? Dharma is what is presented to us to work out our Karma- Its what causes us to act and react in the first place. With out the law of Dharma there would be nothing happening just stillness and bliss. But the reality is that we are moving in this outward spiral and a spiral never returns, it does not close like a circle, The spiral then is destiny ... it is the pulling away and returning back that I mentioned earlier and within that are lots of actions, vasanas, samskaras and reactions, lots of events for us to keep working out our Karma.

Venkatesanada explains that ultimately we do not have free will as it is our destiny to play out these actions and reactions which may even come from lifetimes of spiraling out from the soul of the universe.

The only thing we can do then is to return back more often to the centre until that becomes the strongest pull... we can turn back to the light, through meditation practices, be they tantric or otherwise...

These thoughts inspire me to turn back....

"He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise among men; he is a Yogi and performer of all actions." -Gita, Ch. 4, Verse 18. From The Bhagavad GitaTranslated by Swami Sivananda, Rishikesh

Attracting what you want

2006-07-02T14:46:00.000+10:00

My partner Nyck and I have been watching an amazing online video documentary we purchased called "The Secret". After watching it we thought, This is it...The secret we have been waiting for. For most of my adult life I have done self development work either through yoga or in the area of change consultancy. In those workshops I learned that I was a creative being and that because of that I could have whatever I wanted. However the reason why I wasn't neccesarily getting what I wanted was because I was also a creature of habit. Habits that were carved into me before birth. In yoga these are called Vasana's. These habits drive me and it takes a great deal of will to either root out the unwanted habit or to change my orientation so as to carve out what I would call a more positive habit. When I saw"what the bleep" a few years ago I was very inspired by the idea that when we think the same thought over and over again we strengthen those firing patterns of neurons in our brains. I am discovering through my meditation practice that the mind is wild and sometimes even in the observing of the mind without reaction one thought can just keep appearing. "The Secret" reveals through a similar media style to "What the bleep" how our minds work. It shares that we are magnets and we can attract not only things we want but through, negative thinking, things we don't want. Hence our suffering comes from our Vasanas. This documentary also inspires you to start to become aware of your thoughts and what you are thinking and then to start to connect more to thoughts that make you feel good, letting your feelings be a monitor for what you are attracting. A happy feeling brings what you want... a sad feeling brings what you wish to avoid. It sounds simplistic to just change like that... but I do believe its possible. It just takes vigilance and a sense of letting go. Abhyasa- Vairagya as its called in the Sutras. In tantra we are given profound tools to attract what we want through mantra and yantra. These tools suggest rituals and practices and are very relevant. If those yogis were alive today, I wonder how they might teach?

When we are open in our hearts to the potential we have as humans we might just "Grok" in a second that there is nothing to practice.... as we are that thing that we are attracting already. At the same time the rituals of life help us to strengthen and purify ourselves so our hearts can open. Life is Paradox.....

Matangi

2006-07-01T09:49:00.000+10:00

Matangi is Saraswati in her mahavidya form. She is the goddess of the arts and of happy families. In some myths she was born from the leftover scraps of the foods of the gods. She is therefore the goddess of pollution. We do not need to be pure to express our passions for all things creative. She is the goddess of attraction, whatever she wants she can have....She plays the Vina...

Yesterday I felt her energy within me and as I put it to a friend,
"Matangi came to me this morning as I pondered the unwanted polluted parts of myself. Just had another read through David Kinsey's theoretical take on the myths of her and feel quite a
few resonances with her dark attractive powers.....hmmm don't want to be her
just shine the light on me that is her in spite of my goody goody pure seeking jnana yoga self....."

This morning after Yoga and meditation Nyck and I chanted to Lakshmi....who like the last Mahavidya Kamalatmika is the energy which manifests the ultimate joys of our creative endevours. Ho... to all you creative wise beings out there!

Karma yoga

2006-06-28T21:21:00.000+10:00

Karma means action- take action- but what is that action? Is it merely doing or is it the action of complete surrender. Is it the ego assuming there is something it must do in order to be? Or is it just that in the being is the doing? Once the bow is drawn the arrow is already shot. The mere intention of action is action."In tension". As humans we long to be free of tension but with out tension no action can be taken. It is the paradox of life. To do or not to do, that is the being....

In yoga practice we say release the tension, let the arrow fly, let go feel that you are allready there, in fact all that is and ever was is pouring through you at this very moment. The moment, arrows flying, actions resolving themselves ,new actions being created. Swami Sivananda said " be good " "be good, then do good" Can we accept that we are good and that our purpose is to string the bow, aim the arrow and shoot, and that that flying arrow leads us from moment to moment?

Sometimes I feel like the arrow, my master has taken aim, but I have no idea about the mark, other times my gaze is as steady as the archer and I don't even need to look to shoot. I am guided by the one true soul of me.

Trusting Trusting

Photo of Ganesh by Tao Jones

Deeper meditation

2006-06-27T15:58:00.000+10:00

meditating on the form
deeply moving in
my form is light
the body and its structures
placed carefully in asana
moved by the breath
my tratakam gaze
pulling me in in
I visualise my temple heart
and in it
ganesha ganesha always ganesha

just read a bit by Venkatesananda about the Gerandha Samhita and the three types of meditation- Sthula dhyana, Jyoti dhyana and Shuksma dhyana
moving from more complex forms of visualisation to more subtle

Here is what he says:

"Even so, sthula-dhyana has its place in the scheme of yoga. If the mind is not subtle (being gross and body-conscious), it will not be capable of entering into the subtle regions of contemplation that has often compared to jumping on one's own shoulders. However great an acrobat you may be, a body-conscious, unsubtle mind will not be capable of jumping on its own shoulders. The yogis, realizing this, suggest that it is most advantageous to realize what stage of development one is at, so that one can adapt one's meditation to that stage of development. If all one knows of oneself is "I am the body, gross, physical, material," then it is suggested that this special materialistic approach towards truth called sthula-dhyana be used.

Even should one realize that the earth is extremely subtle, and not what it appears to be through the gross instrument of the human eye, that it is also a mass dancing electrons, subtle, as energy is subtle, if in one's present state of development the earth is seen as solid, let the contemplation of the divine, of the supreme spirit, also be of something solid. There is no harm in proceeding with this, unless, of course, you start insisting that everyone else must do the same, or worse, use it as a stick to beat everyone else into submission:

"The book says to see the ocean! It's prescribed in THE BOOK! Poor man, not to have seen the ocean!"

It is totally inappropriate to force one's own visualization upon someone else. Each must find their own type of visualization. It's not even a question of remaining within the boundaries of one culture verses another. Even within what you think of as your own culture, there are thousands of variations. Some devotees may visualize a crucifix, while others don't even like the symbol of the cross. Some devotees may prefer to visualize a human form. Others would never dream of using a human figure in a visualization of the Divine. Each will have to find his or her own inner predisposition. The only principal that applies to all is the underlying reason for performing this type of meditation: I am body-conscious at present, and therefore, I need a physical symbol upon which the mind can rest, and focus."

Photo of a young swami Venkatesananda by Alan Finger

feeling

2006-06-26T18:51:00.000+10:00

sensitive like fine hairs on a fern
when you pass by it curls
green
green the color of my heart
wishing I didn't feel so much
knowing I need to feel
something
but nothing would be better
I think
the thoughts roll
I lie around in this thick soup of me
dreaming pumpkins

Today I went to have a session with my favorite Ayurvedic practitioner Jacinta here in Byron. As usual it was deep, After being prescribed as having sadhaka pitta out of balance I poured back through my Ayurvedic books to see what it really meant.

The literal definition is" Sadhaka pitta is the fire that determines what is the truth or reality. It is located in the brain and in the heart and allows us to accomplish the goals of the intellect, intelligence and ego. these include worldly goals of pleasure wealth and prestige and the spiritual goal of liberation. It governs our mental energy, mental digestion and our power of discrimination. Its development is emphasized in Yoga particularly the yoga of Knowledge" David Frawley from his book Ayurvedic Healing

That about sums it up for me today....

I

Going deeper with the chakras

2006-06-25T16:36:00.000+10:00

I have just read a page from Swami Venkatesanada's talks at Yashodara Ashram and he shares some fascinating perspectives on the chakras. He says that really we can't prove where the chakras are, we can only imagine them as being placed in certain locations while taking the image-in. Some people can verify the exact locations through their study of scriptures, but really we can't know. We can only experiment for ourselves. He is however, passionate about visualisation and sees the many different images given for the chakras as a way to go deeper and deeper eventually absorbing your self into the root of the image. In other words you start with the simplest image at the base chakra which is the yantra of the golden square and then like a complex tibetan buddhist yantra you can add more shapes, animals, deities and so on... the same thing occurs with the sounds at first you visualise the four sanskrit syllables on the four petals of the lotus until they are absorbed into the one sound which is LAM. Lam is then absorbed into the next chakra like earth settling to the bottom of water in a flowing stream. I am quite inspired by his description as it gives me permission to be as simple or as complex with my visualisations in meditation. Sometimes I need to see each aspect and other times just the sense of it balancing through the mantra and yantra is enough.....