Think about it, one wrong meal leaves a long lasting mark on your physique and psyche. One has to undergo physical detoxification, extended workouts and nature walks to shed the physical and psychological damage done by indulgent eating. If a single physical act can lead to a chain of events, imagine how what havoc a thought can cause! Consider the repercussion of your thought content, and you would shiver to imagine how many ripples it can create. Good or bad -– it is all karma -– material that keeps you bound to the chain of actions and reactions.
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It is with a sense of urgency that we must plan our next incarnation, because it is fanciful to imagine this birth to be your last unless you have evidence to suggest otherwise! Till the time desire exists, we keep getting reincarnated into different forms. Therefore, unless you can claim to be free of desire, intelligently choosing the right birth is the key towards finally getting liberated, as placement in the right environment and circumstance would enable us to move faster on the evolution chart. Considering the impermanence and unpredictability that marks life on earth, any moment could well be our last, and we cannot afford to have a vague undefined last thought in this body.
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A visiting philosopher once asked the Buddha, “Without words, without the wordless, will you tell me the truth?” Buddha kept silent. After a while, the philosopher rose gently, thanked the Buddha and left. Ananda, a senior disciple of the Enlightened One, inquired, “O Blessed one, what has this philosopher attained?” Buddha replied, “A good horse runs even at the shadow of a whip!” Indeed, the pure Being of Awareness from which we have emerged as sparks of a great fire, is silent. The stuff we have sprung from is made of deep tranquility. The deeper we go into this silent zone, the more profound are the verses that spring from our lips. Stillness constitutes the practice of the sages and shamans, because its one spell is more sacred than years of worship. When the body is silenced, rest ensues. When the mind is silenced, peace ensues. When the momentum of karma is stilled through the extinction of desire and attachment, joy ensues. Silence — not the one that disguises internal noise, but a spontaneous swelling of bliss — is indeed the way to freedom. Attaining this domain of stillness is not complicated. You merely have to become still! Just as logic cannot guide you to the land of mysticism, no amount of intellectual reasoning or philosophical debates can take you closer to stillness. Silence is the only way to silence. But yes, be willing to still desire. Keep watch over your thoughts. “Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. Once mastered, no one can help you as much,” says the Dhammapada.

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Yoga describes the sleep state as not only an opportunity for stillness in the body, but a necessary part of the soul’s journey back to Oneness. During sleep we return to our original state that was interrupted by us being born into a physical body, and we can potentially access the power of our heart and of greater insight. Samadhi is similar to sleep but with a difference. In sleep, the content-less consciousness is present but not alert. It is hidden, like the tree is in a seed. In samadhi, the seed is broken, and consciousness becomes alert. Sleep can become samadhi if we become conscious and aware of our sleep. By joining sleep with awareness, we can utilize our night for higher workings. The question is how to stay awake in sleep, when it is difficult to be alert even during the day! The sleep consciousness can be effectively dealt with only after the waking mind has made some progress. So, try breathing with awareness, walking with awareness during your waking moments, so that this awareness can be extended to the sleep state. And then practice falling asleep with alertness. One way to do this is to assume a mudra (hand gesture) such as chin mudra, and practice maintaining the mudra throughout the sleep. The dream waves will throw you in different directions, but keep the awareness to come back to the mudra, and the mudra will help you return to awareness. With continued practice, you will soon glimpse a state of alert sleep, and then your sleep would have turned into your most powerful practice. As your practice solidifies, you will be awake enough in your sleep to know that you are dreaming, and then when you translate this knowledge back to your waking state, you will know that life is a dream posing real!

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Maya deludes the world of men. She is the great enchantress. Krishna says in the Bhagavata Gita, “My Maya is hard to break. Her way of operating is perverse. She makes the real seem unreal, makes consciousness appear like matter, God appear like man and the One many. Maya gives rise to the veil.” We indeed are lost in a land of impermanence and fantasy, intoxicated with the web of multiplicity, lost in the maze of images that all appear real. The themes of victories and losses, of loving and parting keep us enamored. The great enchantress Maya makes us see pleasure even in potential sources of pain. Like a bee stuck to the honey of desire, we are unable to escape. What, then, is the way to overcome this infatuation with the myriad forms of Maya? When a thin veil of illusion is the enemy, denial is not the solution to render it powerless. Vigil is. Patanjali points out how ignorant it is to take the non-eternal, impure non-self to be pure and eternal. Uninterrupted practice of awareness of the “real” is the means of dispersion of ignorance, guides Patanjali. Like a watchdog perpetually on guard to protect its master, so must we be to treasure the Shiva that resides within us. Withdrawal of the mind from distractions and centering it on the awareness that transcendence exists at all times, even in our deluded state, eventually results in the conquest of the Great Illusion.

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Our belly rages a constant fire -– a fire that we call hunger. This fire constantly needs to be fed, from the moment of our conception till our dissolution. Feeding this fire is a sacred duty we perform quite regularly, mostly without awareness, and often without considering it sacred! How we feed this fire determines a lot of our destiny and happiness. Smart practitioners know the link between the belly and the mind, and carefully choose their meals, besides the company they eat with. Moments of eating are moments of contemplation for them, as they watch the transformation of food into thought almost instantaneously. Whereas for most of us, it is the contrary, as moments of eating are moments to get rid of our hunger in the fastest and preferably most indulgent way. We continue to be swayed by forces of habit that make us gravitate towards unhealthy choices of foods and intoxicants. If we merely switch our mindset from “eating” to making an “offering”, a great shift occurs. Mealtimes become holy moments when we are being compassionate to ourselves, and worshipful to the divine fire. The quotient of purity in the food and thereby our consciousness increases manifold. When the food becomes purified, it becomes easier to still the modifications of the mind, and easier to tune in to the state we call yoga. Indeed, right eating is the first step towards the cosmic journey.

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There is power in saying ‘No’ to what you do not need in your life. Indeed, we need very little, and accumulating unnecessary luggage is a huge contributor to our nameless daily existential strife. So let us, for a moment, forget about complex yoga postures, and just focus on eliminating excess from our lives. This in itself would be a great accomplishment and a sure stride towards a yogic lifestyle, since excess is the antithesis of yoga. If we are masters of excess, we cannot hope to become masters of yoga, which is the path of discrimination and balance. Lack is better than excess if you truly desire Yoga, and starvation should be chosen over gluttony -– while striving for the ideal of moderation. Look around you and you will spot many a thing, many a habit, many a relationship, many an obligation that you can do without. Most of our obligations are self-imposed, and give us a false sense of purpose. They really do not exist. If you are serious about following the path of yoga –- know that you have one obligation alone and that is to figure out who you truly are and why you are here. If you are serious about yoga, know that yoga is about giving up. It is not about hoarding. Practice eliminating clothing from your wardrobe that you can do without, and eating not a bite more than your hunger dictates. Ponder on what you can eliminate next –- unfruitful relationships, self-defeating habits, or the web of plans that crowd up your mind. You will feel lighter and lighter in your mind and body from doing this simple practice, and much more deserving for walking on the golden path of yoga.

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We all talk about love for God, the cosmic spirit and aspiring for the divine, but often we are not clear on what we are really aspiring for — and thus do not end up realizing it. At other times we miss the palpable experience of divinity in the strife of life because we are not wakeful. Either way, divinity remains at best an intellectual concept, far away from the vessel of our experience. It is worthy of pity that despite being immersed in and surrounded by divinity all of our living moments, we manage to stay bereft of its live experience. Our very survival depends on divinity coursing through our veins, and hissing through our breath -– yet we ask what it is. To truly feel the essence of divinity, and the love of and for the cosmic spirit, there is a simple path of Mantra Yoga or the discipline of remembrance. Constantly uttering the divine names gradually makes the name slip from the contours of the lips to the recesses of the heart -– from where it begins to form a pool of sweet nectar that, once you taste, you cannot do without. When you ride the wave of remembrance, you no longer get overthrown by the waves of illusion, and are able to tune in to the divine cosmic currents at will. The empowered syllables also allow you to stay aligned to the cosmic will quite effortlessly, and life becomes a joy ride.

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Solitude is the sister of yoga. Without a mind seeped in solitude, most yogic practices yield only superfluous results because with every beckoning of the external, we feel ourselves sway. Solitude shields us from getting sucked into a world of Maya (illusion), by keeping us rooted in our center. Being in solitude does not imply one is alone. It simply means one is in ones own company! It is just a different kind of togetherness, wherein you tune in to your innermost friend –- the companionship of your own Self. You become aware of the ripples of your thoughts, and cognizant of the sound of your breath. Being in solitude could initially seem painful to some, but with patient practice it begins to spell something immensely liberating, when you drop your social masks and be unabashedly you. As the dialogue ensues between you and yourself, your past begins to converse with you, and sleeping memories stir up. You remember things you forgot to say, tasks you forgot to complete, and values you held most important. Resolutions spring up, answers begin to flow, and riddles begin to get solved. Whether you laugh, weep, talk aloud, sing, dance, or merely stay ensconced in the simplicity of existing –- find a way to re-establish this rapport with yourself. With practice, solitude would become an attitude, a perspective to live, wherein our dependence on and attachment with the external reduces, and one is content with very little –- just oneself!

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It is indeed as simple as that. Intend and create. We do it all the time, except that we are unaware of how we are doing it. The distance between awareness of our own willful creations around us, and the lack of awareness of our own constant creativity at play –- is all the difference between freedom and bondage. When we realize what we see around us is our own creation -– we regain the power that comes with being the creator. To not recognize the link between our intention and our creations, we forego this power, reducing ourselves to mute receivers of our destiny. Our not claiming ownership does not negate the fact that we are still accountable for it! It only takes away from our wakeful experience of the power that comes along with such accountability. In truth, we are responsible for each and every dialogue that we deliver and every discourse that we receive from life. Every single act of our life is our design. From the shape of our toenail to the scent of our skin and the size of our room -– everything is tailor-made to our request. We even have a hand in the role others play in our lives. The moment of reclaiming accountability and ownership is the moment of freedom because it allows us to play with our strokes ever more freely. It allows us to access the remarkable territory of pure potentiality, from where all that we dream manifests. The more silent and detached we are, the faster the events transpire.

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There is an extremely simple way to collect power, and that is to say what you mean, and do what you say. Words have power, because they are the physical manifestations of intent. They have form, they have sound, and they have intent. In other words, when our intent wears a form and gains sound -– it surfaces as words. Therefore uttered words are alive, as much as we are! They not just symbolize who we are –- they often decide who we become. Every time we open our mouth to speak, we have a choice. Like any other power, word power can diminish through frivolous and reckless use. When we utter words we do not mean, give words we do not keep, or downright distort the truth, we bring the scale of our personal power down. Consistently keeping ones word and adhering to truth helps to program the Universe to link our words with truth, and then, whatever you speak manifests! Speaking is like creating an image. To create a beautiful vocal image, silence yourself before you speak. Then what would emerge would be pure, and you would have perfected one important posture of yoga –- right speech. Indian saints of yore were masters of this yoga, and the syllables they uttered in deep meditative states became mantras — empowered sacred sounds that can give us access to a whole different power.

The final posture we assume in this lifetime is the posture of death, when we physically lie cold as stone. Interestingly enough, the final posture of Hatha Yoga too is Shava-Asana or the corpse pose, since shava literally means a lifeless body in Sanskrit. After engaging in a series of strenuous postures, the practitioner concludes the session by lying on his back, with half closed eyes, feet separated, and palms facing upwards. The entire body is loosely held without a trace of strain, and the breath is just watched, not controlled. Physical relaxation is just one purport of this pose, and that can be achieved pretty fast. In fact you have to watch out for not falling asleep! Yet, the symbolism of this asana is much deeper. The simplicity of this pose is deceiving. The corpse pose does not just mimic the perfect stillness of death to rejuvenate us physically and mentally — it is a reminder of the end while the journey is still on. It begs us to remember the transient nature of our physical existence. After assuming this posture, when we arise, we must arise a new person, a person who has consciously encountered the end of life and tasted the rest of death, who is consciously and consistently aware that his present incarnation is not forever. Let the Shava-asana propel us to reflect upon our mission for this lifetime, and single-mindedly move towards accomplishing it!

Did you know that to live in bliss is yoga? Indeed, it is one of the most magnificent practices to be in bliss moment to moment. In doing so, you are exhibiting the very first signs of the Space you wish to ascend to. Being in simple bliss, you are doing many complex things. You are displaying gratitude for all that you got at this moment and till now, and you are exhibiting a complete lack of concern for what the next instance may bring –- if not total disregard that it even comes! You are also displaying total concentration in the present moment, which is an act of being whole, and in itself an act of yoga. On this path, there is indeed no place for reason, intellectual debates or staunch discipline. The only qualification is a heart brimming with unconditional joy. The only posture you need assume is one of acceptance. When an artist is completely dipped in the paints he is using — he is practicing this yoga. When dervishes dance in divine ecstasy, knowing only one thing –- bliss and more bliss –- they are practicing this yoga. There is no further to go. If being happy and joyous seems a difficult thing to do, just pretend you are. Sometimes pretending that you already are what you want to become takes you half the way there!

Karma literally means our accumulated actions over lifetimes that keep us bound to what we call our destiny. It is a force set into motion by none other than ourselves, and yet continues to steer us without our conscious knowledge. Men who master science are called scientists, and men who can glimpse their karmic records -– past, present and all the future ones yet to be created -– are called Yogis. Yoga is that science that can reveal to you all that you have forgotten –- deeds done, words uttered, thoughts thought, that you have no recollection of, but which have enough recollection of you to impact your life and keep you endlessly rolling over the wheel of existence. Karma must get exhausted (that is, fully discharged) for us to breathe free. The luggage must drop for us to travel lightly. The sooner we realize it, the sooner we can begin the stupendous task of freeing ourselves from this invisible shackle. Not only do we have to exhaust the burden of past actions, we have to stop creating new ones. One way to do this is to surrender everything we do to the cosmic principle that makes us do what we do. Renounce ownership of your actions and their results. Take yourself out of the picture. Extricate yourself. The other way is to take complete responsibility for your game. Just don’t stay in the middle!

Tat-tvam-asi is the Sanskrit for “That You Are.” The word Tat-tvam-asi is the essence of Hindu Vedic knowledge, the crux of Vedanta, and literally means that we indeed are the cosmic principle. How far we are most of the time from this truth. How little our day-to-day existence correlates with the experience of being that…of being the ultimate. Our identification with our name and form limits us to just that –- a name and a form. Yoga is the art and craft of extending our boundaries, so that we get to erase our limiting confines, and taste the exaltation that comes from identifying with the boundless. Endless are the paths that lead to this destination. To name a few, there is Karma yoga, the act of performing ones duties selflessly; Hatha Yoga, the path of ‘obstinacy’ in mastering postures; Jnana Yoga, the path of inquiry; and Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion. The variety is there to suit different inclinations and mindsets. Pick the path that suits your inclinations, as Nature Herself has planted these within you. Do not fight who you are, because in doing so, you are moving against the flow. Align your journey with your personality, then strive to know the boundlessness of who you truly are!

One of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga is yama or abstinence. Abstinence may appear like a difficult practice, but it is simple. Once you value how precious you really are, you will naturally and willfully abstain from anything that tarnishes that purity. If intellectual discipline to choose the right path is hard for you, just fall in love with your own inner beauty, and sacredness. Then abstinence from things like untruth, violence, covetousness, and indulgences will come easy. You will naturally begin to guard the treasure that you are, and assume the “posture of restraint.” We have the blessing of voluntary movement, and can assume any posture at will –- a posture of love, a posture of dance, a posture of inspiration. With each little gesture, a string of gestures is formed, with a string of gestures, a lifetime if formed. Yoga is the science of refining our everyday postures. All we have to do is change the tone and flavor of our gestures and postures a wee-bit, manipulate the sequence a little, and we could arrive at a far great harmony than we ever imagined. It is a gift we are all already granted at the moment of our birth. We are in Yoga all the time, for we are eternally in Union with the Source. We are all already there! The whole journey is an act of realizing it.

Let’s resolve the dilemma. Inside each one of us, lives a dichotomy. The Other. One part propels us to evolve and ascend, and the other to devolve, slide and fail. Two forces of duality are constantly rubbing against each other, and we are caught somewhere in the middle! No wonder it gets exhausting sometimes. Many times we cannot decide what is the right thing to do, and at other times we know what is the right thing to do, but we cannot do it. If we wish to stop sliding down every time after climbing a little, we need the support of two forces. One is the force of discernment - to know what is right and what is real, and the second is the force of courage - to follow it. Discernment forms the backbone of Yoga, because unless we know what we have to ascend from and ascend to, how can we begin the journey? To hone discernment between the real and the transitory, practice turning attention inwards to observe the contents of your own mind, and maintain an inner and outer awareness simultaneously. Once you are able to do that, sustain unbroken focus on one object, be it the breath or the mantra. Such practice will gradually help you chaff out the purest aspects of you from the rest. Then you merely have to display the courage to side with the pure part of you –- or simply pray for grace!

Yoga is a means of acquiring stillness of mind, and steadiness of purpose. You need not practice many postures. Just pick one, and master it. If you get bored with one, pick a few that suit your temperament. Master them. It is the discipline that yields the fruit, not so much the posture. Watch how long can you retain a single posture, any posture, without moving or glancing sideways. You can just sit cross-legged with a straight spine, and stare into blank space, at the tip of your nose, at the third eye in between the eyebrows or on a candle. This “just sitting” is an important first step. Remember, it is not the object of attention that matters, but attention itself. The means of acquiring unwavering attention is practice, just like with anything else. Consider what you need this attention for. You can use it for anything you want to manifest — success at work, joy in a relationship, or achievement of an ambition. Yet, the true purpose of Yoga is to collect attention in order to realize our unity with the indivisible cosmic principle. This is the highest goal. Like a bath is for cleansing of the body, Yoga is for the purification of the soul.