Yoga of the Heart

Study Takes You to Silence

We are used to thinking of Study as a way to understand something or to learn something — in other words, to make something our own. "Making something our own" always implies that this is being done for the use of the physical body. But when the physical and spiritual bodies work together, you will find that Study leads you to other activities, including many that you may not have considered before, such as silence. Many people do not consider silence to be an activity, but in Yoga, silence is considered an intensely energetic state.

Sometimes you will find that when you have offered your period of Study to your spiritual body, you become filled with a deep and comforting silence. This silence clears the way for the emergence of the intuitive voice. In silence, all thinking and functioning falls away. You become aware of a marvelous feeling of expansion. The feeling is similar to what you experience in meditation when you finally succeed in stopping your inner conversation.

After this happens, your old approach to your world may seem childish, because you realize that you have been using only your physical body. Your patterns of acquiring knowledge change, and there is no limit to your mind’s extension, as you add the emotional, intuitive qualities of your spiritual body to the intellectual, mechanical abilities of your physical body. You are heading into the mysterious, unknown territory of your intuitive nature, inviting it to come forward with knowledge that you have never realized before, described in Shaivite philosophy as "wonder, delight, and astonishment."

Changing Perspective on What You Read

Approaching Study with the idea of involving both bodies will change the way you perceive many things that you read. In one of my conversations with Lakshmanjoo, he discussed the Shaivite way of reading a classical text, the Bhagavad Gita:

Lakshmanjoo: Abhinavagupta has commented upon the Bhagavad Gita in his Shaivite book Tantraloka. He says, "Arjuna, trust in me. Put devotion in me. Put everything in me. I am protector of this whole world. I will protect you."
Alice: Actually he is representing the Universal Body, isn’t he? That Universal Body that supports us.
Lakshmanjoo: Yes. He has spoken in Tantraloka that you should not believe that Lord Krishna, in saying the word "I" in Bhagavad Gita, is referring to his physical body. It refers to universal God. Universal Body. It is not a person.

The word "I" in religious texts always refers to God, not a physical person. The real I, or Self, is the divine being, the Universal Body: the union of the physical and spiritual bodies. Jesus’ statement "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" is an exact representation of this idea. The literal translation is that Jesus was talking about himself as a human person; the meaning that emerges from the spiritual body is that his use of "I" is applied to a being far beyond the physical plane; in other words, the Universal Body. Reading spiritual books in this light will give you a completely new insight into how they relate to you.

Intellectual Hoarding

Study helps you sidestep the false ego of the physical body and open the channel to the spiritual body that waits to serve you. This would entirely do away with a demand to understand, which arises from the physical body. Such understanding would not be necessary when reliance for information is placed on the spiritual body. In fact, a demand to understand would be considered violence to the physical body, because it has to strain to respond. When you feel yourself straining to understand something, the best thing to do is to become silent and fantasize the inner channel between your two bodies. This will give your physical body an immediate rest.

Do you recall in Chapter 3, when I pointed out how Lakshmanjoo corrected my statement about understanding, as opposed to realization? The principle of the ethic of Nonhoarding is clearly related to this idea. Do you study to make what you learn your own, or perhaps to gain someone else’s approval? This would be considered hoarding. When you supply Study as food for your spiritual body, it would be improper to try to dictate how the spiritual body should use this food; you are simply offering it for whatever use it chooses.

When you begin to realize that a demand to understand represents intellectual hoarding by the physical body, you can immediately make a connection between your physical and spiritual bodies. When you do this, you will hear the intuitive voice of the spiritual body speak from within. In Yoga, Study is not captured and harnessed for the physical body’s false ego. It is greatly respected as a power leading to freedom, an unlimited source and form that clears the channel between our two bodies. It must be given the freedom to move and change as it wishes.

Removing the Blinders

Study broadens your capacity for experience, which promotes powerful expansion; an ability to do more and see more — as if you had removed blinders from your eyes. Hard work and Study that use only the physical body are often accompanied by headaches, fatigue, and stress. The spiritual body has no limits and does not suffer from these afflictions. It can operate tirelessly for days, years, even lifetimes. Study gives you an unlimited capacity with no effort.

Study teaches you to become an observer of yourself. You can stand slightly removed from wild, immediate, reactionary involvement with others and your surroundings, and you become able to think before you act, allowing alternative points of view into your mind. This relieves the panic-type responses that most of us experience when we think we are going the wrong way on a one-way street.

Study Encourages Intuition

Your Study provides a path that encourages full expression of the intuitive voice. The spiritual body is a storehouse for everything in this world, not only your own experience and outlook. This remembrance reinforces the knowledge of divine sameness in all of us.

It is most interesting for me to observe my spiritual body respond with knowledge that previously seemed to be beyond my capacity. Even a small amount of training in this ethical practice, as outlined at the beginning of this chapter, will show you how to solve problems more easily. When you are presented with a problem, instead of thinking that you have to respond immediately and fix it, you can step back and wait for the spiritual body to act. And it does — very efficiently. It really surprises you, because the response is delightfully different from anything you have ever seen before.

Learning to Listen to the Spiritual Body
A student wrote:
The other day I was cooking some eggs while involved in some really detailed work, and at the time I thought to myself, "I’ll bet I will forget they are on the stove and they will overcook." Sure enough, I didn’t remember about the eggs until some 30 minutes later. Is there a way to stimulate my intuition to help me do multiple tasks more efficiently?
Your intuition never needs stimulation. It always stands ready to operate. Most people do not hear it when it speaks. Try to remember that it is there and ask the spiritual body to help you. It is your partner; your other half. For instance, when you put the eggs on to cook, you would say, "I don’t have time to check the clock. Please tell me when the eggs are done." You will find that your intuitive voice — the voice of the spiritual body — will let you know when to check the eggs.
I use this technique all the time with many other tasks. For instance, I have not needed an alarm clock in many years. When I go to bed, I simply ask my spiritual body to wake me at a particular time, and it has never failed me. Regular practice of Study helps develop this ability to listen to your spiritual body. Try it yourself, and enjoy the delightful results.

I have said that intuition is the voice of the spiritual body. You can actually hear intuition speaking. Some of you have probably experienced this spontaneously. When you study with the idea of this extra strength behind you, intuition becomes a dependable, powerful support instead of an ethereal, unfamiliar phenomenon. I cannot remember any time in my own experience that my intuition has been incorrect. It is very comforting to know that, although I may not have all the answers, something in me does.

When lecturing in South India, I often faced a double dose of hostility, because as a woman I was considered unclean, and as an American I had no business lecturing on Yoga. My audiences often tried to confuse me by bringing up references to classical Indian texts in their questions. Although my training in those texts was not even as much as they had received at their mothers’ knees, I was able to respond competently by depending upon my spiritual body to answer the question. I knew that my physical body’s experience was not capable; I was able to use my training to step aside and watch the spiritual body perform.

The Expansion of Study

When I feel the expansion of Study, I fantasize it as my spiritual body in full bloom, alight with contentment, its form welcomed and encouraged to display itself freely and happily. You will notice how easy it is to do anything. The powerful personality of the spiritual body has no limit as to what it can do as the relationship between you and your spiritual body becomes solidified and comfortable.

Now it is time for you to enjoy the experience of constant change. Life loses its boring quality and becomes fresh and new. A sweet wind of freedom blows through you. The tiresome, everyday existence is relieved by new opportunities. The classical texts describe the result of being established in Study as follows: "The fruit that accrues from continuously striving for self-knowledge . . . is that the Lord whom you seek will shine before you." In other words, the state of being that is the spiritual body will be visible to you in form.