Yoga of the Heart

In the summer of 1988, when I arrived in Kashmir to visit my teacher, the great Lakshmanjoo — a trip I had been making every summer for nearly twenty years — he was in deep despair. Kashmir, the northernmost state in India, was in turmoil, torn by rival political factions and military insurgents. Although Lakshmanjoo’s own life and property were not directly threatened by this conflict, an American couple who had lived and studied with him for many years were falsely accused of being smugglers, and had been deported.

The loss of these and other precious relationships in his later years (Lakshmanjoo was then eighty-three years old), combined with the warlike atmosphere in his homeland, brought him very near to death. By the time I reached him that summer, he had shaved his head (the traditional sign of impending departure from this world), was refusing food, and had stopped speaking. In his grief, he had lost all impetus to continue living.

I refused to believe that this great teacher’s work in the world was over. Lakshmanjoo had lived his entire life in pursuit of Yogic realization, and was known throughout India for his mastery of the philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism and for his respected translations of the works of Abhinavagupta, a great teacher of Shaivism who lived in the 10th century. One of Lakshmanjoo’s most well-known acquaintances was the late Indira Gandhi, India’s former prime minister, who often traveled to Kashmir to consult with him during her lifetime.

The philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism had intrigued me from the very beginning of my study of Yoga. Everything in the universe, according to this thought, has both male and female qualities. Although it is impossible to describe these qualities exactly, some words that could be associated with the male principle are consciousness, energy, mind, and potentiality. The female principle could be described in terms such as manifestation, movement, and form. Many other Yogic philosophies, such as Vedanta, recognize only the male principle, saying that the female aspect — that is, the manifest world — is unreal; that is why you often see pictures of ascetics attempting to negate their body through suffering and self-denial. They are attempting to prove to themselves that the world, or the female aspect, is not important.

Kashmir Shaivism, on the other hand, recognizes that these male and female principles are an equal partnership; they are so interdependent that they cannot be separated; they are, in fact, one thing. The feeling of attraction between them creates the immense complexity of the universe that we enjoy and celebrate.

Also unlike other philosophies, Kashmir Shaivism is based in emotion rather than intellect. In fact, Shaivism says that intellectual understanding by itself will never lead us to "realization" — the summit of Yoga — because it blocks our ability to experience the full power of that male/female consciousness in ourselves.

In this book, I present this concept of the male/female consciousness that resides in you by using a fantasy picture of a second body, the spiritual body (see Introduction). I pretend that its limbs are various emotions and feelings, and its voice is intuition. In order for you to hear this voice of intuition speak, the intellect and ego must fall silent.

In Yogic texts, this second spiritual body is often evoked with the image of a heart. Even in casual speech, we often say that we are speaking "from the heart" when we are talking about some deep emotional or spiritual experience. When your spiritual body reveals itself and joins with your physical consciousness, the result is a powerful, enlightened individual who has not one heart, but two with which to celebrate spiritual awareness. Our hands are the active, creative expression of our hearts, and so I have used photographs of hands in this book to symbolize the meeting of your two hearts. This joining of the spiritual and physical hearts is what is meant by the title of this book: Yoga of the Heart.

The easiest way to invite your spiritual body to reveal itself is through the practice of Yogic ethics. The word "ethics" often implies a moralistic or religious prescription. Kashmir Shaivism uses this term in a different way. Ethics are the attitudes and behaviors that help you to welcome the spiritual being; they smooth the path to realizing your full potential.

I have chosen ten ethics that represent a part of those discussed in classical Yogic texts. These are done even before the exercises (asana), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation techniques that are more familiar to us in the West. The ten ethics of Yoga I will introduce in this book are: Nonviolence, Truthfulness, Nonstealing, Celibacy, Nonhoarding, Purity, Contentment, Tolerance, Study, and Remembrance. I will talk more about how to approach these ethics as a whole in Chapter 3, and each ethic will be discussed separately beginning in Chapter 4.

I had been studying these ethical principles of Yoga since the very beginning of my practices, and when I arrived in Kashmir in 1988, I begged Lakshmanjoo to tell me more about how these principles were described in the Shaivite philosophy. I was desperately looking for a way to reverse his intention to die. I knew that if anything could catch his interest, it would be conversation about spiritual matters; he had said so many times over the years how much he enjoyed talking to me about these inner aspects of Yoga.

Little by little, the subject attracted his attention, and he began to speak. His voice was very weak and hoarse from nonuse, but he grew stronger every day, and each day he could speak a little longer. We had brought a video camera with us, and he gave us permission to videotape the sessions where we discussed the ethics of Yoga. This book is based on the insights he imparted to me during those precious classes, and I am looking forward to sharing them with you. I have included some of our conversations in this book so you can have the experience of hearing Lakshmanjoo’s words directly.

By the time I arrived in Kashmir that summer in 1988, I had been studying Yoga for many years. It all began one summer night in 1952. I went to bed one night at my usual time, with only the ordinary thoughts a busy homemaker might have on her mind, and promptly fell asleep. In the middle of the night I awoke to see a huge column of light at the foot of the bed. It filled the room with its tremendous radiance. I could only remember seeing light such as this when power lines were down after a storm, flashing as they whipped around and then grounded themselves. The light had no shape, but it was rapidly coming closer to me.

In terror, I pulled myself up against the headboard of my bed, hoping to wake my husband, but I found I could not speak, or move my arms or legs. I knew I was not dreaming, because I could see the curtains billowing at the window, and the branches of the maple tree outside, swaying in the soft summer breeze. Finally I gave up and simply watched as the light grew nearer and gradually began to cover me and enter my body. I must have lost consciousness then, because the next thing I knew it was morning.

I thought back on the experience and wondered if it had been a dream after all. But as I put my feet on the floor and started to dress, the word "Yoga" sprang into my mind. I brushed my teeth and thought about Yoga; I went to fix breakfast for my family and thought about Yoga. I wondered where this thought had come from. I had never even heard the word, except at a county fair long ago where a turbaned man claimed he could tell the future for a small sum.

My family came to breakfast, then the children went off to school, and it seemed like an ordinary day. When my husband lingered over his coffee and paper, I felt I had to tell him what had happened. He put down his paper and suggested that perhaps I needed a good psychiatrist, and with a few more funny remarks along this line, we dropped the subject.

The thoughts of Yoga did not go away, however. I found that I had entered the brilliant world of the clairvoyant. I sometimes knew what was going to happen before it happened. In dreams — and even in broad daylight — I would see and hear people telling me things about the life I led, the future, and most of all, about Yoga. I began to read and study everything I could find about Yoga, struggling to understand what Yoga was and why it had so suddenly entered my life.

One man appeared in my visions more and more often. He was a very large, brown man with beautiful eyes. Sometimes in dreams I would see him talking to me earnestly and would awake trying to remember what he had said. Then more and more he appeared to me during the day — usually in my kitchen as I was doing the dishes. At first I would run from the room in terror. Eventually, though, I became braver and even started to watch for him. He told me his name was Sivananda, and he began teaching Yoga to me in earnest. One day he told me to go to the library and look for a particular book, where he said I would find his address. I thought I had read every book on Yoga our small library had to offer, but obviously I had missed one, because there it was. I wrote to Sivananda immediately, and our lessons continued, primarily by correspondence, for many years.

In the early 1960s I finally decided I had to travel to India to meet Sivananda in person. As I was making preparations, however, he sent word for me not to come. A few months later, I learned that he had died. In my grief, I could not imagine practicing Yoga without his guidance, so I tried desperately to give up my practices, and I tried to ignore the dreams and visions that suffused my life. From my studies so far, I knew that in advanced practice it becomes necessary to have the guidance of a guru (meaning a teacher who has accepted the responsibility of directing a student’s development in Yoga). In the ten years that had passed since that first brilliant vision marked the beginning of this push of Yoga in my life, I had never found anyone else in northern Ohio who even practiced Yoga, let alone someone to teach me.

Soon I found that, no matter how much I grieved for Sivananda, my life had not changed; Yoga was still there and showed no signs of going away. The deep silence of meditation that I was experiencing more and more came slipping back over my mind. So I went back to my daily practices; by now, they had become my essential support.

One day, a year or two later, I received a telephone call from a man named Dr. Kulkarni, who was sent from India to do research in organic chemistry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He said he was in the United States for a year and had met a group of people who were interested in his studies of Yoga. They had raised enough money to bring his guru, Rama, to the United States for a visit. I asked Dr. Kulkarni how he had heard of me, since, despite my inquiries over the years, I had never come across any group nor talked to anyone who had ever heard of Yoga. He vaguely said that he had just happened to hear about me and asked if I would meet Rama at the airport.

Almost overcome with excitement, I hurried to the airport, stopping just for a moment to pick an armful of lilacs from my garden. (I didn’t realize then that the traditional greeting for a guru is flowers.) A beautiful small brown man, with clear brown, laughing eyes met me. He took my flowers, looked into my eyes, and my heart stopped beating as he said, "Alice, I have come for you."

Rama, the light of my life, became my guru and continued my training. I traveled to India with him in the mid-1960s, when the Indian government had just completed its transition from British rule. I lived in his compound — basically a grass-roofed hut surrounded by a small garden near the Ganges River — for several months of intense study. I traveled with him across India as he lectured and taught.

Before Rama died, in 1972, he told me to go to Kashmir and seek out his friend Lakshmanjoo, who would finish my training. Not really knowing what to expect, I traveled to Kashmir with a group of my students in 1974 (I had been teaching Yoga since 1960). Rama’s friends in Kashmir, who kindly helped us with all the preparations for our stay, warned me that Lakshmanjoo probably would not see me, since I was an American and a woman, and therefore considered unclean. But Lakshmanjoo sent word that we should come on Sunday, which was his regular day to receive visitors and students.

We had set up our camp on houseboats in a secluded corner of Dal Lake in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. The day we went to meet Lakshmanjoo, it was raining heavily. We piled into the little gondola-like boats (called shikaras) that were our only form of transportation, and set out across the lake in the rain to Lakshmanjoo’s compound. We arrived bedraggled, wet, and muddy, and stood before the great master in awe. I introduced myself and my students. Lakshmanjoo looked at me long and hard. He said only, "Sing!" So, with quavering voices, we sang some of the Sanskrit devotional songs that Rama had taught us. Much later, Lakshmanjoo told me that his heart had leaped when he saw me, but it would not have been proper for him to show his emotions in front of the Kashmiris who were there.

And so began several years of study with one of the most remarkable men I have ever known. Every summer I traveled to Kashmir and visited Lakshmanjoo nearly every afternoon, talking about Yoga for hours on end in a little tea house in the midst of his lovely garden. He was a generous and loving teacher who has supported me through all difficult times and, most of all, inspired me to fulfill the expression of Yoga in my life.

I am a full-blown Shaivite now. Through practicing the techniques and attitudes of Kashmir Shaivism that I am describing in this book, I have realized a tremendous fulfillment of purpose and strength. I have learned how to use the classical techniques of Yoga (exercises, breathing, and meditation) to form a solid foundation for the experience of joining with my spiritual nature. I have gained great respect for the very different contributions of my physical body and my intellect. Finally, through the diligent practice of Yogic ethics, I have been able to experience the joining of my physical and spiritual bodies, which has given me great strength and has illumined my life.

In this book I will show you how to prepare to reach for this type of experience in yourself. Everyone knows that Yoga has many physical and mental benefits — such as improved limberness, strength, health, and well-being — but there is so much more to Yoga that is available to the interested student. It is this extra dimension of Yoga that I want to tell you about. This book shows you how you can get to know your spiritual nature and enjoy its blossoming in your life with happiness, strength, and a powerful individuality. It does take some courage to venture into the unknown like this, just as it takes the willingness to follow the impulses of your heart. Rama’s motto was "Fearlessness, unity, and bliss," which describes the brave person who seeks meaning in life.

I offer you this book as your guide and teacher, in hopes that it will inspire and support you the way my teachers inspired me. I look forward to sharing this unique journey with you.

From Yoga of the Heart: Ten Ethical Guidelines for Gaining Limitless Confidence, Growth, and Achievement, by Alice Christensen (Daybreak/Rodale Books, 1998).

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