The much-sought-after, greatly beloved exploration of the work of Krishnamacharya, teacher of many of twentieth-century yoga’s greatest and most influential exponents, Health, Healing, and Beyond is filled with deep wisdom—an indispensable guide to the philosophy, principles, and limitless possibilities of yoga. First published in 1998, it is now available again to yogis, students, and teacher trainees everywhere.
Health, Healing, and Beyond
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T.K.V. Desikachar, Krishnamacharya’s son and longtime student, is one of the world’s foremost teachers of yoga. A renowned authority on the therapeutic uses of yoga, he is the founder of the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram and the cofounder of the Krishnamacharya Healing and Yoga Foundation, both of which are based in Chennai.
R.H. Cravens was born in Salinas, Kansas, in 1940. His early career included stints at the Associated Press and Time/Life Books, as well as speechwriting for the United Nations. He had a long affiliation with the fine art photography publisher Aperture, as both a writer and a contributing editor. Cravens died in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April 2009.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Health, Healing and Beyond
CHAPTER ONE
THE FIRE THAT DISPELS DARKNESS
Whatever place, whatever time, the ancestors have framed Yoga practices to suit them all. Only the attitudes and circumstances of human beings change.
When my father was well into his nineties, I walked into his room one afternoon and found him alone, sound asleep. And he was teaching. Even in sleep his words were clearly distinguishable as he chanted Sanskrit verses in the traditional way that sages of India have always taught their students. On this occasion, as I recall, he was reciting the tale of Valmiki, who was seized by a fit of anger when he witnessed a hunter kill a pair of sacred cranes. In his rage, Valmiki started to lay a curse on the hunter, but when he opened his mouth he instead spoke Mankind's first words of poetry. And this poetry was the beginning of the revelations of the Ramayana, the epic poem.
That my father, who was widely known as Professor T. Krishnamacharya, should be teaching in his sleep did not surprise me, although I was deeply moved. In those final years of his long life, I knew he was feeling a great sense of urgency. He had amassed so much knowledge that he alone possessed. He was desperate to pass along as much aspossible, knowing that otherwise it would be lost and irrecoverable. Even in dream life, he was never off his teaching.
Krishnamacharya's knowledge was legendary. It included languages, scriptures, theological commentaries, astrology, literature, rhetoric, logic, law, medicine, Vedic chanting, ritual, meditation, music, and much more. He had earned the equivalent of seven Ph.D.'s. His learning would have filled many thousands of pages. It would, that is, if it had all been written down. Much of it he had learned in the oral tradition, from teachers sought out in universities of a bygone era, and in places as distant as temples in tropical southern India and caves in the mountains of Tibet. Virtually all of this scholarly accomplishment he had committed to a memory that remained perfectly accurate into great old age. I was always amazed by it, as were visiting students and scholars. For example, he could quote an exact chapter and verse of the Mahabharata, the world's longest epic poem--at 220,000 lines nearly eight times as long as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey combined.
The knowledge of Krishnamacharya, I should add, might seem not only arcane but also fairly alien to the modern world. He had mastered most of the languages of the Indian subcontinent, and none of the West. Medicine and law as comprehended in the tradition of Krishnamacharya would dismay most of today's practicing physicians and lawyers. His studies had reached back across centuries into the remote past where history fades into myth. This is the realm of the procreators of all Indian science, religion, and philosophy; it is the time of the Buddha, and the age when immortal tales were first written down about fabulous gods, demons, and heroes. Yet, the purpose of my father's erudition was not to preserve the past, but to serve the present and the future.
The astonishing range and variety of his studies all combined toward a single end. This was to place the promise of Yoga at the service of humanity, without regard to age, sex, race, nationality, culture, station in life, belief, or nonbelief.
Krishnamacharya was convinced that Yoga was India's greatest gift to the world. Part of his genius was to use his enormous learning to reshape the ancient wisdom for modern life. In that sense this most orthodox of religious men was also one of the most revolutionary.
He swept aside prohibitions laid down thousands of years ago against the teaching of Yoga to women. To the contrary, he believed that Yoga was even more important for women than for men, in part because it would enhance their health in pregnancy and in giving birth to a healthy child. He also felt that women were the most trustworthy preservers and transmitters of Yogic teaching.
My father was a celebrated healer in his own lifetime. This ability, too, owed much to his willingness to adapt past practices to present needs. He demonstrated the contributions that Yoga could make to physical and mental health--to the prevention of disease and recovery from illness. In many parts of the world his practices are currently being used to help victims of asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, digestive disorders, back pain, and a host of other ailments, including mental illnesses and disabilities.
He further proved the value of Yoga in sustaining a lucid, balanced mind in our distracting, stressful, and difficult societies. Toward these ends, he experimented and explored ways to refine Yogic techniques to fit the busy routines of modern life.
Even the healing and sustaining powers of Yoga, however, were only a part of his mission. The true purpose of Krishnamacharya's teaching was to bring Man into contact with something beyond himself, and far greater.
What is Yoga, this gift that promises so much? It is a simple word of vast meaning, subject to many partial understandings and not a few misconceptions.
For many millions of people around the world who practice Yoga, it is a kind of physical exercise that involves prescribed movement anddisciplined breathing. This is known as Hatha Yoga. For many, Yoga is identified with types of meditation, such as Raja Yoga, which reaches toward self-knowledge; or Kundalini, the quest for "cosmic energy" and spiritual ecstasy. Kriya is concerned with cleansing, which in extreme forms sometimes appears to be self-mutilation. There is also Tantric Yoga, popularly characterized by its erotic associations. These and other schools have offshoots and variations that, with more or less fidelity to the true nature of Yoga, have their adherents.
Before offering a very brief summary of the Yoga taught by Krishnamacharya, let me present more fundamental definitions.
"Yoga" is a word from Sanskrit, the original literary and philosophical language of India. The word derives from the root yuj, which has two traditional, complementary meanings. The first is "to bring two things together, to meet, to unite." The second meaning: "to converge the mind." The simplest example from daily life is driving a car. We regulate the gas pedal, turn the steering wheel, while simultaneously keeping (it is hoped) our concentration on the traffic and pedestrians around us. Various movements come together and converge with our attention. Champion racing drivers are likely to be among those familiar with moments in a "state of Yoga," even if they might not call it that.
Another meaning may be even more important: "to reach a point we have not reached before." Something that is impossible at this moment becomes possible through Yoga. Today, I sit on the floor and can barely stretch my legs in front of me. After several weeks of practice, I may be able not only to sit erect, but to stretch and bend forward easily, with knees straight, reaching toward my toes. In stages, the impossible becomes possible.
At the deepest level, all of these meanings themselves come together. The source of my father's teaching, and the essence of Yoga, was formulated by the great Indian sage, Patanjali, more than two thousand years ago in this succinct definition:
Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively toward an object and sustain that direction without any distractions.
That "object" can be something as concrete as a work of art, as dynamic as a runner's race, or as abstract as a mathematical formula. It can be as personal and internal to an individual as an exploration of the question "Who am I?" Or it can be as transcendent as being "one with the Lord," whether conceived as a named God or a nameless truth.
There are many, very likely thousands, of texts on Yoga, but the other immortal statement of its meaning occurs in the Mahabharata. Like Homer's epic, its theme is a great war, in this case between factions of a divided family descended from an ancient race. About halfway through the poem occurs the most sublime and perhaps the most influential achievement of all Hindu literature, the Bhagavad Gita. It is a dialogue between God, in the form of Lord Krishna, and the warrior prince Arjuna.
Arjuna surveys the opposing armies and wishes to withdraw from the struggle, even to die himself, before killing his kinsmen. Krishna awakens in Arjuna the vision of his true self, incapable of death, and calls upon him to fulfill his destiny in the action of Yoga. For Yoga is action. Krishna variously describes it as "wisdom in work," as mastery of the "self-willed, impetuous" mind, as "self-harmony," and as the realization that "the God in himself is the same God in all that is." The battlefield portrayed in poetry is, of course, the eternal struggle of Man's striving toward perfection. It is in that sense that Lord Krishna urges Arjuna: "Be one in self-harmony, in Yoga, and arise, great warrior, arise."
Regardless of the religion, revelations require mortal, fallible humans to work out the practical details. This, I believe, was my father's enduring contribution. He was a very practical man, at times even supernaturally so, with an uncanny ability to perceive the human condition. For him, theYoga of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita could be made as accessible to each man, woman, and child as their next breath. And it could lead from that moment to unimagined possibilities.
Drawing upon the wisdom of Patanjali, my father's teaching was based upon a few nshakable premises.
He respected, and perhaps even more importantly accepted, that each individual is absolutely unique. Every man and woman is unlike any who ever lived and died in the past, or who will ever be born in the future....
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Students who enjoy the lineage of Krishnamacharya will love this book. Wonderful insights and in depth teachings of this great master.
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