Christianity lost much of its alchemical fire centuries and centuries ago. Modern yoga teeters on the brink of suffering a similar fate for very different reasons.
Much ado has recently been made in religious circles of the potential spiritual hazards of the practice of yoga. Pat Robertson has called it "spooky" and Southern Baptist Leader Albert Mohler has written a sweeping criticism, entitled, "Should Christians Practice Yoga?" Mohler's view, obviously, is reflective of the Baptist view that Jesus is the only way to reach God. And Jesus, as the son of God, is a distinct entity separate from us. We are not him, and we must go through him to find his father, aka God with a capital G.
On the other side of the spectrum is the phenomenon of modern yoga, which in many ways is at the heart of the culture of western spiritual individualism, in which any pre-requisites -- such as finding God through Jesus -- fall to the wayside in favor of a self-prescribed spirituality catered to individual tastes. When many Americans speak of being on a spiritual path, they mean that they dabble in a few minutes of meditation every week and go to yoga classes. Such free-thinking individualists of course find Mohler's words ridiculous, perhaps stating "how can a system like yoga, that makes me feel so good, be bad." However, while many of the self-styled yogis that Mohler calls out -- myself included -- are quick to proclaim their practice of the ancient tradition, in reality, many of us have little sense of the historical practice, its pre-requisites, and its ultimate aims.
At the heart of the matter is the reality that every religion on earth has had at one time or another embedded in it a tradition of mystic individual practice in which God is not seen merely as an external creator but is regarded as an all-permeating presence that can be realized and accessed through a specific regimen of practices. In Islam, this concept forms the core of Sufism. In Hinduism, it dominates the Yogic, Tantric, Advaitist and Shaivite traditions, and even some of the dualist Bhakti traditions. It infuses all of Buddhism -- though Buddhists wouldn't use the G word -- particularly the Vajrayana Tantras. In Christianity, it had its home in the once-vibrant Gnostic and Alchemical traditions that have influenced everything from the Arthurian legends to Disney movies to the symbolism on the American dollar bill.
All of these traditions, in their own way, view the universe, the anima mundi, in all its aspects -- including the human body -- as a vehicle for spiritual transformation. The alchemical worldview, present in traditions from East to West, is that mind, body, spirit, universe, and God are inseparably united as one, and for one to be addressed on the path to the divine, all must be addressed.
Christians like Mohler clearly aren't having it.
"Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding. Christians are not called to... see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine."
Historically, this is categorically untrue. Gnostics and Christian alchemists viewed the body as a prime vehicle for the realization of God. The core of alchemy is summarized by the phrase "as above, so below," or "here on earth as it is in heaven." The meaning is simple: manifest in the physical universe and in the physical body are all the tools necessary to light the fire, pump the bellows, and transmute the base into the divine. As Rosicrucian scholar and alchemist Paracelsus states: "Heaven is man and man is heaven... We each have a heaven and it lies in each of us in its entire plenitude, undivided and corresponding to each man's specificity."
The Bible itself -- though not the chapters that Mohler probably chooses to read -- is rife with quotes on individual spiritual practice and tales of prophets flaunting what can basically be described as yogic powers. Corinthians, that chapter most-likely-to-be-quoted-at-Catholic-weddings, also weighs in on the issue: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, whom you have received from God? ... So use every part of your body to give glory back to God..." Even the taking of the Eucharist is an alchemical ritual, in which the divine body is subsumed into the individual body in order to bring the individual into closer contact with the divine.
Clearly, there is a historic precedent for the body-as-spiritual-vehicle in Christian tradition, and Mohler would do well to acknowledge it. However, his article does ring very true in one sense. How many practitioners of modern yoga do understand the spiritual roots -- and pre-requisites -- of their tradition? And how much of the real alchemical understanding that formed the basis of historical yogic thought is present in modern yoga?
Christianity lost much of its alchemical fire centuries and centuries ago -- first in the post-Constantinian persecution of the Gnostics and other "fringe" Christian groups, later during the inquisition, in which alchemists were forced to hide their physio-spiritual and meditative practices. They accomplished this through coding their practices in the language of physical chemistry -- they wrote of mercury and gold and sulfur not merely because they were medieval lab-rats, they also ingeniously understood how the internal processes of the human mind-body complex mimic the macrocosm. However, despite the best preservation efforts of small secret societies over the years, many of the specific practices of spiritual self-transformation in Christianity have been lost over the centuries and even demonized.
Modern yoga -- while bringing numerous health and relaxation benefits to millions of people -- teeters on the brink of suffering a similar fate for very different reasons. In Christianity, alchemists and Gnostics were persecuted as heretics. In modern yoga, the historic alchemy is lost in favor of an over-exaggerated emphasis on asana -- physical practice -- and the transferring of modern capitalist and individualistic values to a system that is traditionally concerned mostly with ego-destruction and renunciation.
Historically, yoga is a rigorous process of self-transformation that requires continual practice over decades and decades. In one of the many branches of Tibetan Buddhist yoga historically practiced by the yogins of Ladakh, there were three pre-requisites for initiate yogis to begin on the path: 1) You must be willing to spend many years alone in a cave. 2) You must be willing to spend many years alone in a cave and probably die there. 3) You must be willing to spend many years alone in a cave, probably die there, and have no one remember your name. This certainly is not the feel-good yoga practiced at countless studios and gyms around America. It is an extreme example but it highlights a key point. Yoga as historical practice had a severe starting point, and was certainly not designed to make practitioners feel better about themselves. In fact it was quite often extremely uncomfortable.
Yoga and Christian alchemy in traditional practice contain a process of spiritual and psycho-physiological transformation that quite literally constitutes a trial by fire. The alchemists' crucible, in which base metals are heated and transformed into gold, represents in all mystic traditions the process by which the individual ego is systematically broken down and purified so that one can be more open to the presence of divinity in all aspects of life. In yogic tradition, tapas, or literally heat, is the practice of discipline and asceticism that brings one in direct contact with the divine -- and in many lineages it involved extreme self-denial and even self-mortification. The "goal" of these traditions is not anything as self-serving as the accumulation of mystic powers or the attainment of a great body or even a feeling of wellbeing. The "goal" is the shattering of the individual ego construct and the complete turning over of the individual to the divine will.
In historic yoga, the individual with a capital I, as we in the West often view ourselves, is nowhere in the picture. The paradox of the systems of both Christian and Hindu alchemical thought is while they both view the individual as a vehicle for realizing God they also innately recognize that the way to realize God involves complete destruction and dismantling of the individual. Which means that yoga, at its core has absolutely nothing to do with individual feelings of fabulousness, or well being, or individual happiness, or satisfaction.
Even in the Patanjali yoga sutras -- which interestingly are the least alchemical of the thousands of historic Buddhist and Hindu yogic texts and quite possibly were adopted by modern yoga's founders precisely because they were the least threatening to Western and Orthodox Hindu palates (see Mark Singleton's book Yoga Body) -- physical posture and breathing are but two aspects of an eightfold path that starts with a very strict moral and ethical code that must be adhered to before any physical practice is undertaken. The first of these is to renounce causing harm of all kinds. I'm quite sure that Patanjali would rather see a hundred million worldwide yoga practitioners not killing animals for food than gaining some sense of self-satisfaction from spending an hour doing sun salutes.
So is modern yoga "dangerous?" Of course not. Certainly Mohler and his cohorts -- and orthodox Hindus for that matter -- have nothing to fear from the modern yogis who practice only asana and chant a few words of Sanskrit they don't understand. And as far as danger goes, I'll leave it to the yogis themselves to decide whether the practice of advanced Tantras and Kundalini-lifting exercises should be undertaken by those who can't even sit still for five minutes.
But the "danger," if there is one, is that yoga in the West could come to be viewed merely as another vehicle for self-fulfillment, and thereby fall into that very American category of spiritual practice, in which the goal of practice -- ironically just like the goal of American life -- is to get whatever we want whenever we want it.
There dies the fire.
It is impossible, according to all spiritual traditions, to put immediate self-gratification first and still have long-term spiritual progress. Yoga isn't New Age hokum like The Secret in which all the things we want are promised to us on a silver platter -- it is an alchemical boiling point, a crisis we face upon gaining a small taste of a greater freedom and in recognizing that this freedom comes not from what we've always been told it does -- from the accumulation of material possessions or from those mental constructs that make us comfortable. In fact, it often comes specifically from renouncing those things and turning ourselves over to something greater. The great alchemical joke, in which there is a pointed lesson for all of us in the west, is that the 'gold' that is the ultimate prize of all alchemists, indeed all people, is not found in the ground. The search for gold, that we are all so fervently engaged in, is, in fact a divine search. If we are doing yoga without that divine search, without the practice of that alchemical transformation, well, in fact, we are not doing yoga at all. We are doing poses. And we might as well just go to the gym.
When we do recognize what the nature of the practice is, the only decision left is if we will dedicate ourselves to it fully, if we will heat the crucible and, over time, extract the precious shining brilliance from its source so that we might merge it with a greater brilliance. We don't have be extremists and run off to caves and die there unremembered; but there are pre-requisites, and the foremost of these is the basic recognition of the alchemical and transformative nature of yoga itself.
That's the practice. It is, as they called it in the Christian alchemical texts, "the work." In yoga, as it is in Christianity, and in life.
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Sally Kempton: Should Christians Do Yoga?
Rajiv Malhotra: A Hindu View of 'Christian Yoga'
Christ and in this case Paul said what my Yogi and all Yogi's teach from Pantinjali to now.
You are not the body, but the SPIRIT that live within GOD.
Read Christ and Krishna's words and you will understand they are the same. Not the churches of either religion, that is Churcianity.
Or lost people trying to THINK their believes of living in a material worlds is GODLY.
While your concern is understandable, the power of yogic practices---whether they be sitting meditation, meditation-in-motion, or some combination---IS the practice.
Everyone who comes to any long-term meditation practice (and asanas are mindfulness-of-the-body) comes with their own pre-conceptions, misconceptions, vanities and conceits that must be overcome. The beauty of yogic practices is that if you continue to do the practices with mindfulness they will burn away these misunderstandings.
So the issue is not a matter of how people come to mindfulness practices...or what they (initially) believe they will obtain from them. EVERYONE is misguided to some extent in the beginning. What matters is that they stay....they continue to practice...and they do not turn away from the truths about them that are revealed, and they let the insights that arise guide them.
The other examples that you cite lost their transformative power, because they became stripped down to nothing but a set of sterile beliefs. The power of yoga is the power of practice and direct experience. As long as it is a participatory form of spirituality, they will always self-correct.
So let them come to asana looking for a "yoga body". Let them come to sitting meditation for "stress reduction". They will find far more than they bargained for.
Kalavati, http://www.embark-lovethelifeyoulive.com/
I for one most certainly hope it's a powerful impediment to just swallowing it.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
I'm not ridiculing yoga. Just as you imply, it would be unenlightened of me to ridicule something with which I am not familiar.
What I am ridiculing is alchemy and the romanticized version of it presented here. And even in that case I don't ridicule all alchemists. Some of them did lay the basis for chemisty, which etymologically, as one can see in other languages more clearly than in English, is just alchemy with the "al" left off. Some alchemists were very methodical and careful in their experiments and wrote down all their observations very carefully ("April 7: still no gold. But heating the following combination of ingredients does yield green smoke[...]"), so that really they were practicing chemistry long before it was called chemistry, with the exception that chemists no longer hope for farfetched things like making gold or homunculi out of lead, mud, toad parts and magic spells. Let the farfetched hopes go, concentrate instead on observing what REALLY HAPPENS, and voila! alchemy becomes chemistry.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
I'm not ridiculing yoga. As you correctly point out, it would be unenlightened of me to ridicule something of which I know little.
What I'm ridiculing is a romanticized and unrealistic portrait of alchemy. And even there I don't ridicule all alchemists. The smarter alchemists laid the basis for chemistry. Etymologically speaking, "chemisty" is just "alchemy" without the "al," as can be seen more easily in some other languages than in English. The better alchemists mixed substances, heated them, and, most importantly, observed and recorded the results very carefully. Take away the supernatural ambitions and leave the careful observation and recording, and alchemy IS chemistry. There is no sharp dividing line between the two, no single moment when alchemy became chemistry. It was a very gradual change.
Same thing with astrology and astronomy. Kepler, for instance, made most of his money doing astrological readings for the rich and powerful men of his time. Astronomy is the careful observation and recording of celestial objects, minus the supernatural interpretations of astrology.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
Alchemy -- or at least, that practiced by the brighter alchemists -- ceased to be alchemy centuries ago when it became chemistry.
I regard this as a good thing. A definite improvement. Does that mean I'm dead inside?
"The alchemists' crucible, in which base metals are heated and transformed into gold"
Yeah, except that THAT NEVER HAPPENED in any alchemist's crucible. More recently, gold has been made from other metals in scientists's labs, but last I heard, it still cost much more to make artificial gold than to buy the regular kind, and most people wouldn't want the lab-made kind cause it's highly radioactive.
I don't know an awful lot about yoga beyond the widespread Western conception of it as physical exercise focusing on breath and flexibility. Comparing it to some supposedly glorious lost age of Western alchemy doesn't make it more appealing to me.
"The search for gold, that we are all so fervently engaged in, is, in fact a divine search."
All of us? If all of us are involved in this search, then a lot of us are searching without realizing it, aren't we? Trippy!
Whatever, dude.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
Alchemical sciences are not primarily physical, and have little to do with physical chemistry, ancient or modern. There was some cross-over, but very little.
Alchemy is a body of primarily symbolic teachings and resources, combined with the techniques and practices which allow alchemists to realize the transmutation of base metals to gold --- the transmutation from the Base Metals of artificial over-identification with form, into the balanced, inherently liberated natural state - the Gold of inherently fulfilled consciousness.
Here's a good general background article:
Secret Fire: The Relationship Between Kundalini, Kabbalah, and Alchemy
http://hermetic.com/stavish/essays/secret-fire.html
Does the science of Alchemy have any real transformational depth to it, though?
Yes, it does.
The Archetype of the Holy Wedding in Alchemy and in the Unconscious of Modern Man
http://www.psychovision.ch/hknw/holy_wedding_alchemy_modern_man_contents.htm
Much more info is available at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/
.. and, for what it's worth, Yoga, Tantric Alchemy and Western Alchemy all have a great deal in common - the esoteric paths of the world all work, for those who follow them, to shed limited consciousness, and they are all virtually identical, except for slight variations in the symbol-sets used to denote various aspects of internal consciousness (which all spiritual symbol-sets do, properly understood).
http://blog.chess.com/rolef/tantric-alchemy
The primary purpose of yoga asanas (postures) is to discipline the mind and attention by using the body as a focus of meditation. Tai Chi seeks to do the same. The asanas work because they force the yogi to concentrate and maintain body awareness in order to maintain the postures. While the physical health benefits are wonderful...they pale before the mental health and spiritual benefits that result from cultivating mindful attention.
What people think of as their "mind" and "spirit" (in the Christian tradition) is really just the tip-of-the-iceberg of our consciousness. Yogic practices of all varieties introduce us to what lay beneath the surface...and overtime helps us to integrate that awareness into our daily lives.
Carl Jung once said, "I would rather be whole, than be good." Understanding that trying to live up to often lopsided cultural notions of "goodness" often results in people who are still capable of doing great harm to themselves and others. But people who are genuinely "whole" (have made peace with all facets of who they are) are truly gentle and loving.
The Yogic practices help to make people whole.
I say this having read a lot of medieval Latin, historical, philosophical, pseudo-historical (Geoffrey of Monmouth) and literary works. It's all very interesting stuff. But a golden age it was not. However, medieval people, like the ancient Romans and Greeks before and like many people at many times, themselves believed in Golden Ages -- in long-lost pasts when everything was so much better than the effed-up world around them. In the past few centuries some of us have begun to shake off various sorts of mental nonsense, including this nostalgia for good old days which never were.
Carl Jung studied alchemists and people who believed in UFO's. But he didn't believe in alchemy, or that all those flying saucers were real. A lot people don't seem to get that about Jung. He was a psychiatrist. He was studying crazy people.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
...." As per one legend, he fell (pata) into the hands (anjali) of a woman, thus giving him the name Patanjali....."
My own site, http://livingunbound.net has some very similar information -- including some modern teachings and techniques which are a direct distillation of some of the esoteric teachings of the world's mystical paths.
Unfortunately, much of Christianity is bound by belief (ideas), thus blocking reality - the very reality made available via the mystical paths of all religions -- including Christianity.
Ideas are the problem; practices, including ongoing observation/awareness, are the key to experiencing every promise religion has ever made - and far beyond.
Belief blocks reality.
Practices reveal reality.
Peace to all.
The lesson of course is each separate self is on their own journey and time to Self Realization. For there really is no TIME or time lost for our individual paths to rejoin Cosmic Consciousness. How can we leave that which we already are.
Even the EVIL ones. The Last Shall be First.
As gentle as my Great Teacher was, it is hard to imagine him scolding me, but I am sure he would
But after all, his rocket ship methods of taking the ego self to the one REAL SELF have touched my soul and I will dance my journey in my time and not his. But then even NOW he speaks to me in material action as much as he does in spiritual action. There is no difference or time. In or out of body
After all when my son died of body, the multi-colored light traveling here and there and glowing puff balls falling from a transparent base were 2 spiritual events exemplifying my sons specific physical and spiritual life. What a gift. Was it My son, my Guru or GOD. Is there a difference.
Thank GOD for Raja Yoga, Yogananda and your Yoga article
also frustating [like wall st running america and capitalist jungle law republicans including Mohler and Boehner]
to know that vatican and hindu establishment authorities are ignorant of the purpose of the knowledge they believe in and are trying to live
St Theresa of Avila was very much closer to Christ than any Pope;
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was at one with God and completely at one with the unified field of natural law ,more so than the 4 Shankaracharya's of India
the only person [pardon the absolute] who understands completely Maharishi Patanjali's yoga sutras is His Holiness maharishi Mahesh Yogi [ physics degree ]
the main person alive today who understands patanjali's yoga sutras [theory and practice] is DR John Hagelin ,superstring theory specialist ,president of global union of scientists for peace
the only path which is both effective ,in short time and long term, and is comfortable and non-damaging
is Maharishi's TM and TM-Siddhi program including yogic flying
a very concise and comprehensive delineation of patanjali Yoga [for laypeople ,secularists] is in the appendix of "on the bhagavad-gita": Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
http://transcendentalconsciousness.com/bhagavad_gita.htm
http://is1.mum.edu/vedicreserve//yoga.htm
http://is1.mum.edu/vedicreserve/forty_branches_large_views/Yoga.gif
http://www.mum.edu/faculty/egenes_tom_sanskrit.html
http://is1.mum.edu/vedicreserve//
in largest context, Yoga means union of individual mind with the divine
PHD level :
http://www.mum.edu/msvs/6195WellsIntro.html
http://bramin.wordpress.com/page/2/
They keep our nun in mental hospital for 6 months and give her many drugs to make her talk who is her leader. I am Buddha she keep telling them until they have doctors paper to shock her brain. Only then they let her out after a year. No trial yet. Will you do something where you are for peace to show you are Buddha when she go to prison again please? If we all say no to war peace come everywhere quickly.Your family pictures are worth words too many but yes. Or be For as it says in your Declaration de Homo Sapient, ´When in the course of human evolution it be necessary to create among the following Angels de Innocence:
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&gbv=2&tbs=isch:1&&sa=X&ei=vPvGTPjcKcH7lwfz9KzZDw&ved=0CCAQBSgA&q=depleted+uranium+baby+images&spell=1&biw=1360&bih=506
!NAMESTE!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1594923458222660515#
Enough said about the connection of this wonderful practice with any specific religion. The physical benefits it offers are important enough to savor without considering the metaphysical ones
Anurag Lohia
CEO, divinewellness.com
http://www.divinewellness.com/Blog.htm