Sublime

As the Bhagavad Gītā explains, the unmanifest appears as manifest and then returns to the unmanifest. What we see outside is the manifested, the in-between. That is what we call the creation. That’s why, according to Yoga, we don’t say that God created anything. Yoga says God is just the pure consciousness.

Dharma has a dual meaning: religion and duty. In the second stage of life, a Hindu confronts this duality, learning to reconcile his spiritual life with familial duties.

I especially enjoyed the work of Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), a.k.a. “Arthur Avalon,” who—while prominently serving as Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in British India—spent his private hours explaining, defending and ultimately practicing in the then widely reviled Hindu religious schools of Shaiva and Shakta Tantrism.

In fact, Haṭha Yoga is based mainly on the equilibrium of these two forces. “Haṭha” means the “sun” and “moon.” The two opposites must be blended together in a gentle

Devipuram—“The Goddess’s Abode”—the temple complex that Guruji had spent more than three decades building up from almost nothing in the rural wilds of eastern India.

Vyāsa considers error to be essentially the five kleśas, the impediments to the practice of yoga: ignorance (avidyā), ego, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life.

This is repeatedly taught in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (e.g., in 4.2.4): “About this self, one can only say, ‘Not this, not this.’ It is ungraspable, for it cannot be grasped.” This maxim, based on the Sanskrit neti neti, is a “rule of substitution,” negating any words that might follow. Brahman is therefore “not this” and “not that,” eliminati