Foreword
Swami Veda Bharati was an exemplar of yoga as therapy. By this I do not mean that he taught yoga therapy as though he were training clinicians. It is what he lived and showed us every day. It is one area where one could gradually come to see the degree of siddhi which he so carefully hid. He often explained that he knew that he was dealing with a great deal of karmic baggage in this body. He had severe type 1 diabetes, serious cardiovascular disease, a disintegrating spine in his elder years and he details other difficulties throughout the book. He welcomed these challenges as the means to burn the karmic impressions (samskaras) that kept him body-bound. As one who knew him close-up, I saw how he would come to the edge of a cardiac arrest at least once daily for many years. Ar that moment he would just say, "Give me a minute." And he would withdraw into his yoga-nidra for a few minutes and then carry on cheerfully as though it had just been a minor disturbance. He had pain, but I never saw him suffer. We learned through his experiments in various laboratory settings that he remained in a delta brain wave state basically all the time, waking or sleeping, perpetually in yoga-nidra. When I assisted him through his night's work (he was definitely a "night owl") he would finish his dinner around 10 p.m. and then begin his work reading emails before we settled down. Then he would lie down in yoga-nidra and the composition of his writings would begin to flow for me to transcribe and then type up the next day. In this state his writing flowed not from him, since in the state of yoga-nidra one's awareness is beyond the personal ego, but from the lineage of Himalayan masters. When he lectured, he would surrender his seat to the lineage in his preliminary meditation and the lineage's great teaching would flow through his voice. Sometimes he would ask to hear the recording because "he," the personality of former Dr Usharbudh Arya, had no idea what he had said. He was a living example of what Swami Rama had been sent to the West to demonstrate: what a human being could accomplish through the science of yoga. "Yoga is not for therapy; it is for liberation and therapy is a side effect." In this collection of transcribed lectures, you will hear about yoga science as "con-science." Not just conscience as one's moral imagination, but as a science that merges all sciences in the pursuit of consciousness. He makes the point at the outset that the traditional Indian notion of science is one that must encompass all knowledge. Western empirical science, on the "Enlightenment" model of Newtonian mechanics, accepts as valid only evidence obtainable through the cognitive and active senses. This limits its field of knowing to objects. And consciousness can never be an object. We learn from some of the proponents of quantum mechanics that consciousness is actually the first principle of even the physical universe'. It is consciousness that collapses the probability waves in which everything exists into manifest energy and matter. The science of yoga takes one beyond the world of objects into the ultimate subject, consciousness, which we call by many names: God, Shiva, YWH, Brahma, Allah, Shunya (voidness), Wakantanka... It is from the perspective of this transcendental science of consciousness that a yoga therapist must see the one whose suffering s/he intends to alleviate. For this reason, it is imperative that "yoga therapy" not simply become an appendage of "objective" Western medical science and praxis. We must see the person we propose to help from the perspective of yoga science and be able to combine that with what empirical medicine can offer in a collaborative, but not a derivative, way. In this way we can gradually learn how to assist people in accessing the quantum level of healing. It is this level of consciousness and spirituality that is responsible for the inexplicable remissions of cancer and other diseases described by Richard Selzer MD in his book Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, where, as the chief surgical resident at Yale Medical School, he describes episodes of healing that he could not explain medically. One of Swami Veda's greatest accomplishments and contributions to our learning was the skillful way that he used living with his physical illnesses and his relationship to them as a means to enlightenment. He often told us, "Do not allow body conditions to become mind conditions." Yoga is the science of self-transformation. Our health or illness is a result of our integrity in walking that path. And the illness of the body, too, can become a means for Self-realization.
About The Book
INNER HEALING "All sickness, physical or mental is a lack of balance." Various aspects of the body, mind, senses and spirit are seamlesly interwoven into a composite whole offering a unique perspective and a definite guidance for well-being. Yoga therapy is not a new concept; however, certain practices have been lost through the ages. Understanding the origin of disease, and our attitude towards illness are essential to the healing process. The emphasis is on a spiritual approach to illness and liberation. The science of spiritual liberation and therapy are inter-related. The ultimate in therapy is spiritual liberation. The sheer range and depth of the content drawn from personal experience and exceptional understanding of the underpinning philosophy on yoga therapy and related practices are distinctive features of this extraordinary book.
About The Author
Mahamandaleshwara Shri Swami Veda Bharati (1933-July 14, 2015), was a rare Sanskrit scholar of our time, unsurpassed in his profound depth of knowledge, philosophy and practice of Meditation. He was born in a Sanskrit-speaking family and raised in the centuries old Vedic tradition. He taught the Patanjali's Yoga-sutras for the first time at the early age of 9 and the Vedas from age 11. Having never attended any school, he received his M.A. from the University of London and a D.Litt. from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. From 1952-1967, he spread the Yogic and Vedic teachings in many parts of the world, including Africa and the West Indies. In 1969, he received the highest initiations into the mysteries of Meditation from his Guru Swami Rama of the Himalayas who linked him to the sacred lineage of the Himalayan Yogis. Thereafter he established and guided Meditation groups and centres in all parts of the world. He had access to 17 languages and taught Meditation in all of the major languages of the world and to followers of all religions.
Hindu (1761)
Philosophers (2327)
Aesthetics (318)
Comparative (68)
Dictionary (12)
Ethics (44)
Language (349)
Logic (80)
Mimamsa (58)
Nyaya (134)
Psychology (505)
Samkhya (60)
Shaivism (66)
Shankaracharya (232)
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