MIRCEA ELIADE, one of the greatest students of religion in the twentieth century, once declared, “[We go] to the past only in order to learn about such authentic possibilities of human existence as may be repeatable in the present.”1
This book is an inquiry into one such collection of possibilities—the three-thousand-year-old wisdom tradition called yoga.
In the pages that follow, we will direct our gaze backward to the fantastic possibilities for human existence discovered by this wisdom tradition. We will direct our gaze backward to an ancient series of discoveries about the human mind and body so remarkable that even the most sophisticated contemporary neuroscience is still at considerable pains to explain them—though their reality can hardly be denied. We will direct our gaze backward to a dazzling two-thousand-year-old treatise on yoga and meditation called the Yoga-Sūtra, a virtually anonymous tract that is one of the most brilliant pieces of spiritual and psychological writing known to humankind.
We will look backward, yes. But, as Eliade suggests, we will look back at this tradition only in order to see there the reflection of our own possibilities. We may be surprised to find that the ancient wisdom tradition of yoga speaks vividly, even urgently, to our present needs.
I first discovered yoga more than twenty years ago. Like most Americans, I came to it initially as a form of physical exercise. It didn’t take me long to appreciate the enormous benefits of yoga postures and breathing exercises, and I found myself drawn into a regular practice that steadily increased my energy, stamina, concentration, resilience, and enjoyment of life. In the early years of my practice, however, I didn’t appreciate that these physical practices are only one facet of a vast and extremely sophisticated wisdom tradition. I didn’t realize that the yoga postures I was doing at my health club are part of a three-thousand-year-old science of extraordinary living that concerns itself with every aspect of human functioning—mental, physical, and spiritual.
As I discovered the larger wisdom tradition of yoga, I was intrigued: The practitioners of this science of extraordinary living have lived and thrived on the Indian subcontinent for at least the last three millennia. They have concerned themselves with a series of perennial questions—questions that are as challenging today as they were when scantily clad yogis first gathered in the forests and mountains of India: What is an optimal human life? What would it be like to function at the maximum potential of our minds and bodies?
For at least three thousand years, yogis have carried out experiments to investigate these questions. Their bold investigations have led to remarkable discoveries about human perception, attention, cognition, motivation, sensory integration, memory, intuition, and volition. These early yogis found that very few human beings live anywhere near the optimal range of human functioning. At the same time, they demonstrated that almost any of us could do so, with much less effort than we imagine. Surprisingly, extraordinary living does not require more native genius than most of us already have.
These yogis, too, have been interested in a second, related series of questions: What are the root sources of human suffering? Can these roots of suffering be cut? Can human beings learn to be happy and at ease in this difficult life?
Their answers to this second set of questions have also been surprising—and, frankly, for many Westerners, just plain unbelievable. Yogis studied the structure of ordinary human unhappiness, and found that the sources of everyday suffering could be entirely “extinguished”—leading to a kind of freedom we ordinarily think impossible. Yogis have called this “liberation.” Liberation in this instance means freedom from all the sources of conditioning that bind us to small ways of thinking and being. Liberation means being entirely awake, and fully alive.
The most comprehensive exposition of the ancient wisdom tradition of yoga comes in the form of a two-thousand-year-old treatise called the Yoga-Sūtra. Although its origins will probably always remain obscure, it is most likely that the Yoga-Sūtra was written by a sage named Patanjali, in about the second century CE. The views and practices described by Patanjali in his Yoga-Sūtra embody the genius of many centuries of yoga practice and investigation. Some scholars have come to call these views and practices classical yoga, but within the tradition itself they have most often been called rāja-yoga—meaning “the royal road of yoga,” or “the exalted way,” or “the noble way.”
The wisdom tradition called rāja-yoga preceded the development of postures and breathing exercises (called hatha-yoga) by many centuries. In fact, most of the important treatises on hatha-yoga2 were not written until the fourteenth century or later, and almost all of them refer back to Patanjali’s Yoga-Sūtra. Most of the greatest adepts of hatha-yoga have taught that postures and breathing practices should be practiced within the goals and context of the broader wisdom tradition. The Yoga-Sūtra is a foundation stone of all later yoga practice—though (surprisingly enough for modern readers) this classic treatise involves almost no teaching about yoga postures as we know them.
What kind of yoga, then, does Patanjali teach if he does not teach postures? Usually, his text has been thought of as a meditation manual—and it is certainly one of the most sophisticated meditation manuals in the world. But it is more than that. Patanjali views every aspect of living as an opportunity for practicing wisdom. He is concerned with how we think and act, how we breathe, move, sleep, dream, and speak. Every aspect of our motivation, cognition, and behavior is of interest to Patanjali—and he harnesses them all as part of the path of yoga.
Patanjali’s treatise comes with a notorious challenge. The Yoga-Sūtra was clearly written for advanced practitioners. As a result, many of us contemporary yogis (who have not yet experienced the dazzling possibilities described in the Yoga-Sūtra) find it difficult to read, its meanings often frustratingly elusive.
This has been a problem for me and for many of my friends who practice yoga and who wish to understand its deeper practices. My first copy of the Yoga-Sūtra sat for almost five years on my bedside table gathering dust. Occasionally it called out to me just before sleep, reminding me of my obligations as a yoga student. Read me! Because I am a Presbyterian by upbringing, I guess, and an overachiever by nature, this eventually worked. I picked it up.
I’m glad I did. For a decade and a half now, I’ve been pondering small and digestible portions of the Yoga-Sūtra. It’s been challenging at times. But compelling—because a little bit of study reveals a stunningly clear exposition of the structure of human consciousness, and the path of optimal living. (Early students of the Yoga-Sūtra have made extravagant claims about studying the Yoga-Sūtra. One tradition—about which I remain skeptical—claims that the internal architecture of this treatise is in itself so mind-altering that simply memorizing and repeatedly chanting its lines will lead to complete liberation.)
There is reassuring news about the challenges of this treatise: we contemporary yogis are not as alone with its difficulties as we might imagine. For two thousand years, this complex document has intrigued, inspired, and befuddled practitioners of yoga. As a result, it has spawned countless translations, commentaries, and verbal and written wrestling matches of every sort. Each new generation of yoga practitioners struggles with this treatise, and leaves behind the helpful traces of that struggle.
It seems certain that most of Patanjali’s students, and peers, were renunciates and ascetics who devoted their lives to rigorous training—like Olympic athletes of the spirit. They were willing and able to invest the tens of thousands of hours usually required to master the forms of mental training detailed in the Yoga-Sūtra. Patanjali was clearly writing for these yogi athletes. Much of what he writes presumes a direct experience of the various stages of yoga which he describes.
Alas, most of us contemporary Western yogis are not ascetics, or monks or nuns. And though we may aspire to be Olympic athletes of the spirit, most of us do not have so much time on our hands. We’re lucky to practice for half an hour a day, between getting meals for the kids, doing the laundry, and working the extra shifts to pay for the new roof.
Does it make any sense, then, for us to study this ancient wisdom tradition of yoga? Perhaps we should just stick with our once or twice weekly dose of downward-facing dog pose and cobra pose at the YMCA. Does it make any sense for us to meddle in a tradition originally prescribed for wandering renunciates and mystics?
I think it does. For when we pare Patanjali’s treatise down to its bare bones, we will find that at its heart lies some very simple principles—principles and practices virtually anyone can understand and use. Indeed, in many cases they are principles and practices we can use while we’re getting meals for the kids, and doing the laundry, and getting to work. They are principles and practices we can use in conjunction with our twice-a-week yoga classes, or our daily practice of Ashtanga yoga, or Kripalu, Iyengar, or Bikram yoga.
And it is my experience that we can discover a great deal of freedom in the process. To be honest, though, this freedom will almost certainly not include “extinguishment” of all the roots of suffering—achieved by the great yogi athletes of ancient India. It will almost certainly not include the fantastic supernormal powers of which Patanjali writes in his great treatise. But it might, just might, include liberation of a sort, nonetheless.
For the last fifteen years, I’ve been studying and teaching the principles of the Yoga-Sūtra. Throughout most of that time, I’ve been a teacher at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, the largest residential yoga center in America. I’ve taught these principles and practices to every sort and condition of modern yogi. Sometimes with results that surprise even the most skeptical among us.
I am a psychotherapist by training, and schooled in Sigmund Freud’s ironic declaration of the goals of Western-style psychotherapy: “Psychoanalysis,” said Freud, “frees the patient from neurotic misery, so that he can return to ordinary unhappiness.”3 The ancient yoga practitioners were not nearly so interested in neurotic misery as we have been. But they were very interested in what we might call “ordinary unhappiness.” Yogis believed there might actually be an antidote for ordinary suffering. My experience with thousands of students over the past fifteen years—and in my own life—leads me to believe that this is not esoteric hyperbole. Regular study and practice of the principles of yoga does in most cases lead to a life with less suffering. It does free us to live more fully. In some cases (and I’ve seen more than one), it even leads to profound changes in character.
In the pages that follow I’ll attempt to bring to life the bare bones of this fascinating tradition of rāja-yoga—as they are laid out in the Yoga-Sūtra, and as they are embodied in the lives of my friends, students, fellow yogis, and teachers on the path. As our story unfolds, the reader will meet six contemporary yogis who have given the broader principles of Patanjali a serious try: Jake O’Brien, a lawyer struggling at midlife with seemingly intractable relationship issues; Maggie Winslow, a sixty-two-year-old aspiring novelist, seeking to discover her own authentic voice; Susan Goldstein, a popular interior designer, wife, and mother, who suffers from compulsive eating; Kate Johannson, a professional dancer, now retired because of injury, and separated from her wealthy husband; Rudi Sawyer, a local Berkshires handyman, gardener, and yoga adept; and myself, a middle-aged, sometimes neurotic, and possibly overeducated WASP, trying to have a useful and happy life—and struggling to write a book very much like this one.
My narrative unfolds at or near Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, in Lenox, Massachusetts. The characters are composite portraits based on real people and all the stories in this book reflect real events. However, names, dates, and circumstances have been significantly altered to honor the obligations of friendship, confidentiality, and decency.
It will become apparent to the reader that each character in this book struggles with some particular aspect of living. It is not fashionable in so-called spiritual circles these days to talk of struggle. But the ancient yogis did not hesitate to acknowledge that life is full of struggle and pain. And yet, these early practitioners found that struggle itself could be transmuted into the most noble characteristics of the human being. Indeed, an optimal life is not possible without struggle. Liberation and struggle are two sides of the same coin.
Occasionally in these pages, the words of an intriguing character will appear—a character who was particularly interested in struggle and its relationship to liberation. His name was Swami Kripalu (1913–1981). He was the most recent lineage holder of an ancient yoga lineage that stretches back to mythic Indian time—back to Vishvamitra, an Indian Seer who was one of the founders of Vedic Hinduism. Kripalu Center is named for Swami Kripalu, who visited and lived with the community for four years before his death in 1981. Swami Kripalu was a highly accomplished hatha yogi. He was also a devoted adherent of the larger wisdom tradition of rāja-yoga. He was a prolific writer, poet, classical musician, athlete, actor, and speaker. He was dauntingly learned. At the same time, he was a sweet and down-to-earth man—very grandfatherly. He also had a warrior side—and was relentlessly honest about the reality of struggle. He said:
In the entire world, there is not one human being who is free from pain. Even in favorable conditions, a person encounters struggle. The external form of struggle appears to be cruel. Some describe it as a horrible demon, but its nature is not malicious. In fact, it is proper to welcome struggle, for its arrival is always auspicious. Struggle keeps us from growing sluggish. It changes an animal into an ideal person. It transforms an ordinary human into a spiritually-awake person respected by the world…It is alright if we cannot receive struggle with love, but struggle should never be discarded. To discard struggle is to discard God’s grace.4
Struggle and liberation live side-by-side in the life of a practitioner of yoga. My hope is that the stories of struggle and liberation that follow will inspire the reader to look carefully into the possibilities of transmuting ordinary struggle into a quietly extraordinary life. And that our gaze backward into the discoveries of the ancient yogis will also be a gaze inward—a gaze that will, as Eliade suggests, unlock our own authentic possibilities for living.
Lenox, Massachusetts 2005