Footnotes

*1. A glossary of Sanskrit and other technical terms is provided for the reader’s convenience at the end of the book.

*2. However, aware of the difficulties non-Hindus encounter with the correct pronunciation of mantras (phonemes derived from the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet), Sri Goswami, pure teacher that he was, confined his teaching of Laya Yoga in the West to theory only.

*3. Vyasa was the Indian sage who is also considered the author of great Hindu epics, notably the famous Mahabharata.

*4. It is tempting to assimilate these intangibles into the theory of strings and superstrings that aims to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics.

*5. Concerning the chronological reality of the duration of manvantara, read notably René Guénon, Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques (Gallimard, 1970).

*6. In Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Sengers, Entre le Temps et l’Éternité (Fayard, 1988).

*7. German linguist (1823–1900), author of numerous studies on the religions of India.

*8. For example, the U.S. World Boxing Champion “Sugar” Ray Robinson used to refrain from all sexual activity during a six-month period prior to major contests.

*9. This version of Kipling’s poem reprinted from A Choice of Kipling’s Verse Made by T. S. Eliot (Scribners, 1943).

*10. Also see brahmacarya in the previous chapter on “Yama.”

*11. Bhuta Suddhi literally means the “cleaning of the (maha)bhutas.” The term has different connotations depending on the yogic discipline concerned. In the Haṭha Yoga context it is best understood as an advanced purifying process that involves breath control with or without mantras. It is an important mental process that aims at eliminating all thought as it reproduces, virtually, the awakening of the Kuṇḍalini, which is a very real experience.

*12. C. Frostell, J. N. Pande, and G. Hedenstierna, “Effects of High-Frequency Breathing on Pulmonary Ventilation and Gas Exchange,” Journal of Applied Physiology 55, no. 6 (December 1): 1983.

*13. Yogic discoveries and their variations are probably not unrelated to the current differing interpretations concerning the two brain hemispheres.

*14. Compare with Heraclitus’s wisdom, which is pregnant to seekers of Truth: “The hidden harmony is better than the visible” (Fragment 55).

*15. A detailed exposition of Laya Yoga is presented in Sri S. S. Goswami’s masterwork, Laya yoga (Inner Traditions, 1999).

†16. Patañjali was an Indian philosopher and grammarian (around the second century BCE).

†17. In The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India (South Asia Books, 1994), the eminent Dr. David Frawley, expert in the Vedas (vedācārya), sets out edifying conclusions on the subject.