Yoga of the Heart

Study (Sanskrit name: Svadyaya) is rarely looked upon as part of ethical practice, but it can be an important source of nourishment for the spiritual body. When students ask me which sacred texts are suitable for Study, I have to say that all texts are sacred to someone like me. The practice of Yoga is not religious, and, in my opinion, anything you read can be transformed into usable food for the growth of your spiritual body.

Some food is more powerful than others. I have a friend who keeps a supply of what he calls "junk novels" on hand for times when he feels ill or out of sorts, or for traveling. He uses this kind of Study to dull himself out and give himself a rest. It serves him by answering a specific need. All forms of Study can benefit you in some way.

HOW TO BEGIN PRACTICING STUDY

1. Read something every day. Choose something to read that will give enjoyment to both your physical and spiritual bodies. Pretend you are a host expecting a very important visitor. Naturally you wish to offer the very best things at your disposal, things that your guest will enjoy. In choosing your Study materials, try to keep this attitude in mind. You do not have to read volumes; a small amount, even as little as ten to twenty minutes, is enough.

After you have finished reading for the day, take a minute to offer what you have read to your spiritual body. Start by becoming silent, and fantasize that you are making an offering of Study to your spiritual body. Ask your spiritual body if it enjoys what you have given it. This conscious connection from your physical body to your spiritual body will encourage your intuitive voice to speak.

Even ten minutes may seem an added burden to a person already working very hard and long each day, but give yourself a week’s trial. Make your Study periods short and sweet. Say to yourself, "This is food that is going to comfort my inner nature. This food will satisfy my spiritual body and encourage it to show itself." Play a game with yourself. If ten minutes seems too long, promise to read just one paragraph a day. This practice will have a very quick, powerful effect, especially if you do your Study just before sleep.

I have learned to look upon Study as part of my work day. This is work I do for myself — both of my selves. My physical body and my spiritual body both need food and attention, and Study supplies these things.

2. Use the ethic of Remembrance. There is a special relationship between Study and Remembrance (see Chapter 13). As you study, ask yourself, "How does this relate to me? How do I feel about this?" You will get an answer from your physical body. Now ask the same questions of your spiritual body. This will help maintain an open channel of awareness that is needed to hear the intuitive voice of the spiritual body.

3. Try to give your spiritual body enjoyable food. Many times I have seen parents place wonderful expensive food in front of children and they will not touch it. Other times I have seen a parent pick up a child and coax it to eat the plainest food and the child adores it. The difference is the parent’s love and attention. Your love and attention toward the spiritual body would transform what you study into the most inviting food. The way you demonstrate attention to the spiritual body is to recognize its existence and appreciate its strengths. When you develop this constant attitude, anything that you consciously offer to your spiritual body becomes enjoyable food.

The spiritual body has directed your entire life from an unseen position and is now being invited out of the darkness to center stage. By remembering the spiritual body’s connection to you, everything that you study can become appealing to its nature. There is no need for censorship of any sort on literature, music, or any other type of expression. All expression, if offered correctly, is considered divine.

I often see people pretending to study in a thoroughly judgmental way, believing that they must either accept or reject what they read. This is your physical body trying to function alone. When you study as part of ethical practice, simply read the material, make no judgment about it, and offer it in the best, clearest condition to the spiritual body. No food that is offered with loving attention to the spiritual body is ever rejected.

Previously I told you how, when I was living in the jungle with Rama, practicing the discipline of silence, he would give me long books on classical Yoga written in Sanskrit and other languages and tell me to read them, saying, "All you have to do is look at it, and when you need to use the knowledge of the book, it will come forward." This advice has proved to be true throughout my career. Obviously, the spiritual body is a storehouse for all information.

4. Avoid the trap of thinking that visionary experience can replace Study. Sometimes I encounter people who have had marvelous visionary experiences and who conclude that they no longer need to study. Lakshmanjoo explained the problem with this point of view:

Alice: Sometimes people have a vision about something so they think there is no need to Study or read.
Lakshmanjoo: They are misled. There is no end. It is like . . . A blind man comes to examine the body of an elephant. If he touches its leg, he says it is just like a log. He won’t feel the whole of the elephant. He won’t come to the real understanding of what the elephant is.
Alice: Because he has only a small picture of it.
Lakshmanjoo: Yes. That is all it is. Limited vision. As long as limited vision is existing, it is useless. It is incorrect. So you must study.

RESULTS OF PRACTICING STUDY

Expand Your Experience

One of the most important functions of Study is to help you get to know yourself better by revealing your spiritual body. Study broadens your thinking and sharpens your awareness. Practice of Yoga techniques, specifically exercise, breathing, and meditation, will increase your ability to transform Study to personal experience by increasing your alertness and sensitivity, and giving you the courage to try new things.

Everything you read has meaning to the spiritual body. By offering everything to the spiritual body as described above, you open yourself to an expansion of experience. For instance, I love to cook, so I often read cookbooks and watch cooking programs on television. When I see Julia Child using a blowtorch to light her Cherries Jubilee, offering what I am watching to my spiritual body, I share Julia’s delight in her experience and may even consider doing something similar. If I were watching with only my physical body, I would probably dismiss the episode as a ridiculous and dangerous stunt and I would miss the delight of a new and unusual experience.

The ability to transform what you study into something useable for both bodies is a step that is hoped for in education but is rarely taught. Most of us read and study what other people have written and use it to reinforce the outlook of our physical body instead of inviting the outlook from the spiritual body to join with us. When this relationship between the two bodies is established solidly, it will give you the power to face life with a strong, individual point of view.

The Value of Self-Understanding

All language is a springboard to personal experience if it is offered to both bodies. At their best, our educational systems promote this idea by stimulating students to think for themselves; all too often, however, schools, especially those for younger children, attempt to prescribe what their students should learn from their Study. Students often burn out when they try to accommodate uncounted numbers of opinions that are not their own, like sophisticated memory banks.

When Study is not related to personal experience, the resulting feeling of separateness sabotages the growth of the student because it denies the participation of the spiritual body. Study helps both bodies grow and helps you discover how both bodies feel about things; simply quoting what someone else has already said, a function of the physical body, does you little good and is, frankly, boring.

The best use of Study, then, is to help you find yourself, your reason for living, by opening you to the experience of both bodies. Lakshmanjoo translated the Sanskrit term for Study in this way:

Lakshmanjoo: Adyaya means understanding. Sva . . . the self. Svadyaya, then, is understanding of self. Understanding of self-consciousness, through books.
Alice: Is the self-consciousness that you’re describing the same as the state of being that we have discussed that is called Shiva?
Lakshmanjoo: State of being, yes.

You will notice that Lakshmanjoo points out that Study is directly connected to the spiritual body, not the physical. Study is considered a food source for that body.

The problem of finding oneself is addressed in all literature. As you read, you can vicariously enjoy seeing yourself as the main characters as they struggle to accomplish this goal. Throughout this book I have talked about the importance of fantasy techniques. Many times, the images that will illuminate your fantasies will be archetypal images, and your Study will allow you to become more familiar with these images historically and poetically. I encourage you to explore the vast array of symbolic literature that includes myths, legends, and fairy tales.

Beyond Books

All written words are observed in Yoga to be symbolic of the practice called Mantric Yoga, the repetition of a particular sound formula (given to a student by a teacher) that supposedly has a special effect on the practitioner. Mantric Yoga is considered a form of Study. "Om" is a mantram that I discussed briefly in Chapter 10. Yogic cosmology states that the universe itself evolved from the primal sound Om. This sound was given the form of a written word, and all other writing and language is supposed to have evolved from that first sound. This idea is echoed in many other creation stories around the world — for instance, the story of Genesis in the Bible, where the "Word" is the first manifestation of God. In other words, sound took form.

A Special Aspect of Study
There is a marvelous book called Garland of Letters, by Arthur Avalon, in which he discusses the Yogic philosophy of sound, writing, and language. The writing or drawing of any word is considered a yantra, a unique diagram that has a specific effect on the reader’s brain. This special concentrative technique is also considered an aspect of Study. With the correct attention, any form of reading or writing would be considered food for the spiritual body.

Alice: Mircea Eliade’s book Yoga, Immortality and Freedom says that Study consists of two things: knowledge of sciences that relate to deliverance from existence (moksha) and repetition of the syllable Om. Is the repetition of any or every mantram a form of Study?
Lakshmanjoo: Only that chief mantra, Om.
Alice: So even blind people who could not read a text could practice Study by repeating Om.
Lakshmanjoo: Yes. I will give you definition of Om. Om is that being, all the thirty-six elements, all these six kalas [powers], six circles, and all one hundred eighteen worlds. All these elements, all these worlds, and all these cycles are digested in that being of Om. And that being is not only sound. Sound is the indicator of that being. That being is bliss, ananda.
Alice: By the chanting of Om, does that being eventually take form before you?
Lakshmanjoo: It rises by and by, within oneself who is reciting this. He must know that "I am reciting this mantra Om." It is not only the word Om. It is an indicator of this being.
Alice: Swamiji, when the syllable Om is written in Sanskrit, what does that represent?
Lakshmanjoo: It is a drawing of your own self. The realization of it will take place only when it is recited with great awareness and devotion.

(to be continued)