Let's think : By Dr.King, Swami Satyapriya

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Unless you are a novice who is just introduced to Yoga, you probably have noticed that the effectiveness of Yoga practice gradually tapers off over a period of time. It is no longer as effective as it once used to be. Why does that happen?

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 For most of us asana or body posture is purely a physical thing – stretching, contracting and balancing the body in a specific way. So, you must be wondering what has neuroscience got to do with it! But you may be surprised that even this seemingly physical ‘thing’ has underlying neurological basis! That is what I am going to discuss in this episode.

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 In this episode, we will briefly discuss the neuroscience behind many techniques that result in a sharply focused mind – or ‘Ekaagra Citta as Patanjali calls it. Along with the well-known Pranayama of Patanjali, I will touch upon the so called ‘Mindfulness’ techniques as well.

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 In this episode, we will briefly discuss the neuroscience behind a very important step of Patanjali Yoga namely Pratyahara. This is an in between stage of ‘mundane’ and ‘spiritual’ steps of Yoga.

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        The topic of this episode is a strange case where a young girl declares herself to be God. It may sound crazy or height of arrogance, and even blasphemous, in some of the majority religions

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‘creation hymns’ of the ancient Indian Vedas. But we will be

looking at this hymn from a slightly different point of view.

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Big bang theory is the most widely accepted scientific theory about

how our universe emerged 13.7 billion years ago. Though there is not

much of empirical evidence about this theory yet, except for

mathematical derivations, it is most likely to be true. This theory

was propounded in the late 1940s and refined in the past few decades.

But what is amazing is that there are seemingly similar descriptions

of the origins of the universe, in the more than 5000-year-old Vedas.

– the most ancient scriptures of India. In this talk, I will

briefly touch upon one such description.

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 Almost all the meditation practices that are propagated today are

based on the idea of Kundalini and associated Chakras.

The concept of Kundalini is so popular that one has to think twice

before calling it as a myth 😉 It can be viewed as blasphemous!

I had discussed earlier how one of the well-known Gurus of our times,

namely Swami Dayananda Saraswati, brushes aside Kundalini based

meditation as “not meditation”.

Let me look at this practice a bit more in depth before sharing the

views of some of the well-known Yogis of our times, on this idea.

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-8HXGBD0CVC'); [Quick links] [Pause]  Patanjali is normally credited with laying out a formal base for Yoga or meditation. The meditation talked about by Patanjali seems to be a reframing of early Buddhist meditative practices in the light of Upanishadic meditation, and under the strong logical framework of Samkhya. What does Patanjali say about meditation? p { margin-top: 0.42cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm; direction: ltr; color: #00000a; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }p.western { font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }p.cjk { font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-IN }p.ctl { font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji"; font-size: 14pt; so-language: ar-SA }a:link { color: #0000ff }

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-8HXGBD0CVC'); [Quick links] [Pause]   Once, one of my readers surprised me by saying that Upanishads never talk about meditation! Probably he was watching a bit too many of the videos by the Advaiti Swami that I talked about, a few episodes ago 😉 That Swami sometimes says that meditation is only an aid to move on the path of enquiry or Jnyana Marg; and as such, meditation cannot lead to ultimate realization. We have already discussed about this earlier, when I talked about that swami. Is it then true that Upanishads don’t talk about meditation? p { margin-top: 0.42cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm; direction: ltr; color: #00000a; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }p.western { font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }p.cjk { font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-IN }p.ctl { font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji"; font-size: 14pt; so-language: ar-SA }a:link { color: #0000ff }