LEARNING YOGA

Swami Vivekananda in his "Raja Yoga - Conquering the Internal Nature", Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, 1998, too speaks of this birth that is regarded highly by all the saints.

The human body is the greatest body in the universe, and a human being the greatest being. Even the Devas (Gods) will have to come down again and again to attain salvation through a human body. This human birth is the greatest we can have. 

He asks us to uphold the following affirmation.

Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it.

Swami Vivekananda goes on to explain creation in very clear terms. When there was neither aught nor naught, what existed he asks.

At the begining of creation there is only Akasha. That Akasha existed without motion. The physical motion of the prana was stopped, but it existed all the same. At the end of a cycle the energies now displayed in the universe quiet down and become potential. At the end of the cycle the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasha again, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the prana. At the beginning of the next cycle they start up, strike upon the Akasha, and out of the Akasha evolve these various forms. And the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akasha.  

This concept was brought to the layman through this scene in the movies.

By what power is the Akasha manufactured into this universe he asks.

By the power of prana. Just as Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent material of this universe, so is this prana the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. From thought down to the lowest force, everything is but the manfestation of prana.

We are moved by prana to inhale and exhale he says. How do we retain this prana in us? The means is by Yoga. Swami Vivekananda says of Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga, both as having distinctive goals.

Hatha Yoga deals entirely with the physical body, its aim being to make the physical body very strong. The result of this branch of yoga is to make men live long; health is the chief idea, the one goal of the Hatha yogi. He does not fall sick. He lives long; a hundred years is nothing to him. But that is all.

"So if a man lives long, he is only a healthy animal", he says, where else "the science of Raja Yoga proposes to give us a means of observing the internal states."

The science of Raja Yoga, in the first place, proposes to give us such a means of observing the internal states. The instrument is the mind itself. the power of attention, when properly guided, and directed towards the internal world, will analyse the mind, and illuminate facts for us. The powers of the mind are like rays of light dissipated; when they are concentrated, they illumine. This is our only means of knowledge."

The form of yoga known as Raja Yoga is based on the aphorisms of Patanjali, the higest authority on Raja Yoga. The science of Raja Yoga proposes to put before humanity a practical and scientifically worked out method of reaching this truth. 

Swami Vivekananda puts forward many theories and practical means based on these aphorisms.

As soon as this body dies we shall have to manufacture another. If we can do that why cannot we do it just here and now, without getting out of the present body? If it is possible that we live after death and make other bodies why is it impossible that we should have the power of making bodies here, without entirely dissolving this body simply changing it continually? They also thought that in mercury and in sulphur was hidden the most wonderful power, and that by certain preparations of these a man could keep the body as long as he like. 

Marco Polo (1254-1324) in his travels through Asia picked up immense amounts of direct and indirect knowledge that was narrated to Rustichello da Pisa while both were held in a cell as prisoners-of-war in Genoa. Rustichello cowrote Marco Polo's story, "The Travels of Marco Polo." From "The Customs of Kingdoms of India", translated by Ronald Latham, Penguin Books, 2007, were come to know of Yogis in India of past times.

Among them (brahmans) are certain men living under a rule who are called Yogis. They live even longer than the others, as much as 150 or 200 years and their bodies remain so active that they can still come and go as they will and perform all the services required by their monastery and their idols and serve them just as well as if they were younger. This comes of their great abstinence and of eating very little food and only what is whiolsome. For it is their practice to eat chiefly rice and milk. Let me tell you also of a special food they eat for I assure you that they take quicksilver and sulphur and mix them together and make a drink of them, which they then drink. They declare that this prolongs life, and so they live all the longer. They drink this twice a month and make it a practise of it from chilhood in order to live longer. 

The Siddhas worked on the resurrection of life, renewing life itself and brought renaissance, renewing society with their radical views that changed the thought of the people, the perspective on life, and their lifestyle. P. Karthigayan in his book "History of Medical and Spiritual Sciences of Siddhas of Tamil Nadu", says,

In Kaaya Siddhi that was attainable by the Siddhas, the physical immortality or deathless physical state was possible as they were possessed of the blood of Gods in a lustrous body. This state is attained by altering the natural physical fabric through science that prevailed then.

He quotes Paracelsus,

The prima materia (ambrosia) can consume a mans old age and confer a new youth upon him. It purifies the whole body and cleanses it of all its filth by developing freash young energies, it can remove the impurities from man - down to the nail and the skin - and make him grow anew, thus it renovates the old body.

The Siddhas he says asserted that immortality was two-fold or dual in nature. One needed to attain Atma Siddhi or spiritual immortality and Kaaya siddhi or physical immortality. In Atma Siddhi they preserved their soul with the spirit within and in Kaaya Siddhi, they preserved the body and soul. He gives a clear distinction between the Yogi and a Siddha in their believes, intention and purpose in life. Yogis considered their body as a bag of sin suitable only for worldly life and rejected the same; while the latter considered the body as a means to achieve exalted spiritual heights and immortalized their body by scientific means. The Siddhas reincarnated their spirit with the soul within their own body by eliminating the worldly substances in it. The death without dying, or saagaamal saagum kalai, a status attained by the Siddhas is loss of substances related to earth except for the form of their profile. Substances of perishable nature will get replaced by substances of cosmic nature and complete the transformation known as Kaaya Siddhi - retaining one's body forever. The Siddhas held the view that "if one "ate" the cosmic substance for immortality, the body will slowly acquire similar cosmic qualities and their mere touch can turn on miracles." True if we can eat food each day, why not eat "prana" from the air. 

Swami Vivekananda explains the ways of yoga and pranayama.

Nerve currents will have to be displaced and given a new channel. New sorts of vibration will begin, the whole constitution will be remodelled, as it were. But the main part of the activity will lie along the spinal colum, so that the one thing necessary for the posture is to hold the spinal column free, sitting erect, holding the three parts - the chest, neck, and head - in a straight line. Let the whole weight of the body be supported by the ribs, and then you have a natural easy posture, with the spine straight. 

After learning to sit straight as explained, he brings us to the practice of Nadi Sutti or purifying of the nerves. Agathiyar on the onset that was his first lesson for me on Yoga, taught me this technique through the Nadi reading. Swami Vivekananda quotes from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad on Nadi Sutti:

First the nerves are to be purified, then comes the power to practise pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, through the left nostril fill in air, according to capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out throught the right nostril, closing the left. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capacity; practising this three or four times at four hours of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in 15 days or a month purity of the nerves is attained; then begins pranayama. 

Having being invited to the path of the Siddhas through the Nadi readings, we were blessed to have great masters teach us the way of the Siddhas. Agathiyar who extended the invitation showed us the means and the way, techniques and practices, rituals and mantras and more, through the Nadi initially and through divine manifestations later. He gave us two wonderful personal gurus Supramania Swami and Tavayogi. He showed us to Thavathiru Rengaraja Desigar's teachings. He introduced us to Pranayama and Dharana through the Nadi and sent over Tavayogi again to show us Yoga Jnana Kalai. 

When in Malaysia we were blessed to learn more Yoga postures or asanas and breathing techniques or Pranayama from the guru himself.

I was blessed to join a class under the tutorship of Master Yeoh Swee Chong and later his student Margaret at my office who taught us the Fragrant Qi Gong.

Then we had both our masters Arunan and Yuvaraj show us further variations of Yoga asanas.

Then he sent Acharya Gurudasan or popularly known to us as Master Gowri Varadhan to teach us the intricacies of Kriya Yoga.

We had Perarulalan move our butts from the couch and bring us outdoors to be with nature at least for those few hours.

We thank all these masters for adding value to our lives.

After following all the external regimes and rituals given by Agathiyar to the word, he has finally brought us to go within. These days it is easier to settle down and be silent. Even if we wanted to continue a ritual or sing songs of praise, he shuts us up and brings us to sit in silence. It is interesting to note that what started as zero knowledge on the Siddhas, slowly we learnt from masters and gurus on the path of the Siddhas and the Siddhas themselves who dictated through the Nadi the many rituals and practices that consisted of an elaborate and extensive rendition of the long list of names of the Siddhas compiled which accompanied the lighting of the sacred fire or homa; the sixteen items used to bath Agathiyar or the deity we chose to invocate; extending the volume of songs sung in praise of them, all of which took several hours. All that has been reduced to mere minutes these days.

Today our worship has come to only include the recitation of the nature or tanmai of the divine that accompanies the homa; bathing Agathiyar or the deity we chose to invocate with just water and we sit in silence. We will have to go within hereon. We sit together in silence each day before our father. We do not bring our self made problems to him no more. We start with thanking him for all he has given. We let the thoughts from the past and the thoughts for the day come and go. Eventually, the thoughts settle without our knowing. We do not use force. Once the thoughts settle the breath is noticed. We continue observing the breath without controlling it. Bliss and calm is felt. We prolong this wonderful moment. We do it just a few minutes each day. We try not to have a break in the routine for we will then find it difficult to get back into that state fearing then that laziness will set in and we will begin to give all the reasons, not to sit.