The Yoga Sutras and The Red Violin

The Yoga Sutras and The Red Violin: a review of David Gordon White’s New Book

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Canadian director François Girard’s 1998 film “The Red Violin” tells the fable of a miraculous instrument, crafted by one Nicolo Bussotti (a character modeled on Antonio Stradivari) that passes through the hands of several virtuosi over four centuries and three continents. Its rapturous tone beguiles generations of listeners. Several of its players die in ecstasy while playing it. Don McKellar’s chronologically labyrinthine plot sweeps the violin towards a fateful auction in the present day, concealing to the very end the source of the violin’s deadly mystique. Spoiler alert: We learn in the final minutes that the blessing and curse of the instrument is apparently soaked into the very grain of its soundboard. Bussotti had been crafting the violin for his unborn child. As he’s finishing the final sanding, he is summoned home to find that his wife has died in labour along with the baby. In abject grief, he bleeds her corpse to create a final vermillion varnish for the instrument, before going mad. The violin’s power is rooted in this single terrible, revelatory night: so say these storytellers, who in uncovering the mystery play the taut strings of our yearning for an essence we dream we could rescue from the vrittis of history.

Now here’s a true story about old things. This past spring, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the results of double-blind test of old and new violins, performed at the Auditorium Coeur de Ville in Vincennes, Paris. Ten elite soloists compared the sound qualities of twelve instruments – six by 18th-century luthiers and six by contemporary makers. The soloists clearly preferred new instruments over old, and were unable to reliably distinguish their ages. These were the types of performers who might pursue a red violin to the ends of the earth. But the test proved that a violin’s age or reputation does not create its tone. Playing it does.

In a wildly entertaining tour-de-force of deconstructive research, David Gordon White’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A Biography (Princeton University Press, released today), is an extended meditation on the red violin of modern Yoga, along with its most famous players. The Sutras have an uncertain beginning in the hands of a forgotten master. Countless pandits, commentators and dilettantes have played and brokered them, each according to their period and training. The Sutras have travelled the world on scrolls, folios, and now through pixels. They’ve been copied, miscopied, translated, mistranslated, silenced and silent for generations, appropriated and stolen, dressed up for show and stripped down for parts. They have born silent witness to the passage of kings, religions, and philosophical and scientific paradigms. Everyone who touches them claims possession over their essence – the blood in the varnish. But no one can agree upon what that essence is. And like the ten soloists puzzling in their welder’s goggles over equally beautiful instruments in a Paris concert hall, we are compelled to ask in the end: what do origins and authenticity mean, and why does it matter?

I won’t attempt to interrogate the breadth of White’s scholarship in this review, because I’m so not qualified – there are very few who are. But with notes and a bibliography so voluminous PUP opted to store them online, I’ll assume that he’s covered the available sources. Some may claim that an oral tradition for holding the essence and historical continuity of the Yoga Sutras eludes White’s reach, because it would only be accessible to initiated adepts, but I’ll deal with that below. I’ll focus in equal parts on the contours of his data, and what they may mean to the contemporary practitioner. I’ll begin with a synopsis of the sutra “biography”, give a list of idols that this history hollows out, wonder aloud what White actually feels about the “blood in the varnish”, and conclude with a few notions of what this deconstruction frees us up to do.

What are the Yoga Sutras, and how did they get here, according to White? Titled either as we know them, or as a part of a larger work called the Yoga Shastra (228), the 195 aphorisms are compiled in “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit” (10, 230) from as many as six sources (35) within a several century range straddling the Common Era by an editor who may or may not be a commentator on Panini’s grammar or the serpent-boy lauded in the Shiva temple of Chidambram (37). Whether he was a scholar or a god impacts the reception of the Sutras as smriti or sruti (written or revealed), which in turn would shed light on whether they were ever chanted or not. (40) The text has often been thought to utilize the “older” vocabulary of Samkhya metaphysics, but it’s becoming clearer that the two systems are chicken-and-egged (23), with the further complication that the sutra’s first commentator, Vyasa – who may have been a) Patanjali himself (226-234), b) a contemporary of the composition or c) could have written several centuries later to subvert the supposedly “more original” Buddhist message of the text (41) – unduly emphasized Samkhya terms such as “prakriti” and “purusha” (11), perhaps to the neglect of the more repeated Buddhist terms like “shunya”. Of course, “Vyasa” is a recurrent nom de plumethroughout Indian literature, so there’s also that.

Spoiler alert 2: White wryly concludes the sleuthwork of the “origins” question this way:

“[W]e can be certain of a number of things: that the book you have been reading is the reception history of a work that may or may not be titled the Yoga Sutra; that the author of that work may or may not have been named Patanjali; and that that work may or may not have been the subject of an original and separate commentary by a person probably not named Vyasa.” (234)

So the first readings that survive for us are riddled with mystery and misreading. We’re off to the races, though the course is unmarked.

The text is then commented upon by everyone, it seems, except practicing yogis. (5) A certain Shankara, who may be the precocious 9th-century theologian or a post 14th-century writer (41), Hinduizes the arguably atheistic aphorisms by positioning the text’s “Ishvara” as the cosmic creator. Vacaspati (“Talk-Meister”) Mishra, 950CE, the despot Bhoja in the 11th century, and finally the Qualified Nondualist Vijnanabhikshu in the 16th century each throw down strong commentarial tracks. (42-45)

But the text’s shine is starting to dull. In the parallel literature of the Puranas through to the 14th century, Yoga is mentioned, but the Sutras are largely ignored, and Patanjali is absent from the lineage lists (46), signifying his gradual isolation from a practice and literary culture increasingly concerned with “Vedic” authenticity. White relates: “we can see that by the twelfth century, Patanjali’s system had been caught in a pincer movement… rejected by orthodox Brahmins for being beyond the pale of the Vedas and by the burgeoning ranks of Hindu devotees of gods like Krishna, Vishnu and Shiva for being non-devotional.” (52) Vijnanabhikshu’s commentary would constitute the last interest paid to the book until the period of the British Raj.

Did the Sutras go underground at that point? Were they kept alive in Himalayan caves, chanted from chest to chest? In response to the Desikachar family’s shifting hagiographical claims (more below) that T. M. Krishnamacharya inherited an ancient chanting practice for the Sutras (208), White has this to offer:

“There is no explicit record, in either the commentarial tradition itself or in the sacred or secular literature of the past two thousand years, of adherents of the Yoga school memorizing, chanting, or claiming an oral transmission for their traditions.” (80)

Full disclosure: this stings me personally a bit, as I spent some time in my own exploration of the Sutras riffing on the implications of what I assumed to be its oral culture milieu. My intention was to accentuate the intimacy and indeterminacy of the Sutras-as-conversation. But I didn’t need to rely on this particular fiction, which I’d inherited by osmosis from the Desikachar literature and also from sitting occasionally with a Toronto-based pandit who taught Patanjali as if he were echoing the ages. It turns out that Derrida was write: text can be just as indeterminate as speech, especially as far as the Sutras go.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on this historical lacuna for a moment and what it might mean to practitioners today. An essential (and essentialist) story in the marketing of Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) holds that Patanjali’s text is carried by a continuous flame through the ages, never snuffed out, but often hidden in such ways as to increase its radiance – as in the “Shangri-La” of the Himalayas, “the pristine haunt of authentic sages in whose entranced minds all of India’s ancient wisdom had survived intact.” (99) White points out that this particular construction of authenticity, perennial to Indian lore, was shrewdly plucked and packaged for modern broadcast and consumption by the certifiable fraudulence of Madame Blavatsky and her gaggle of “polyglot clackers” who claimed direct contact with “Himalayan Masters” over the “magnetosphere” of Tibet, and through them channeled and churned out several very odd distortions of the Sutras as ignominy chased them all the way to India itself. (103-115)

It’s worth remembering that several prominent MPY lineages — one is tempted to say “brands” – continue to be rooted in this story, on exquisite display here as Pandit Rajmani Tiganuit leads the camera through a tour of the Himalayan Institute’s new Sri Vidya shrine in Khajuraho.

The temple, which is actually far south of the snowy peaks for which the Institute is named, is sparsely decorated. A lonely portrait of Tiganuit’s teacher, Swami Rama hangs in a room above an artificial cave containing a rock “that once existed in Tibet” that Rama’s teachers going back “thousands of years” have sat upon to meditate, according to Tiganuit. Front and centre in what appears to be the shrine’s atrium are the Sutras, printed in bold Devanagri, mounted in four large picture frames, one for each pada I imagine. They are tablets worthy of Cecil B. DeMille.

As the camera pans over the tablets, Tiganuit weaves a now-common pastiche of sentiments inspired by the Sutras, yet seeming to have nothing to do with them:

The shrine is unique in the sense that we don’t have a statue of a particular God or Goddess, but… the body of knowledge that continues to provide guidance and direction to mankind. That body of knowledge itself is at the core of the shrine. This is the epitome of what we teach, what we believe in. The shrine is a living example of the message of the sages, that we must create a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern science, between East and West, and we must remove the gap that exists between different cultures and civilizations, and we must learn to build a bridge between our worldly lives and our spiritual lives. And that is why here, we have Yoga Sutra of Patanjali…

It appears that the tablets have full view of the newly constructed yajna pit that anchors the courtyard in polished concrete and tile. Lest we think that picking apart the knots of cultural exchange and appropriation in MPY will be in any way easy, here we see a reconstructed Patanjali meet a revisioned Vedism in a temple built by a transnational Yoga corporation, dedicated to an evangelizing Swami specializing in Hatha siddhis who was chased back to India by an impending State of Pennsylvania lawsuit involving allegations of sexual predation.

Rajmani Tiganuit bowing before the Yoga Sutras.

The tour of the Khajuraho shrine is a perfect figure for White’s background summation the MPY melting pot:

“Over the past century, [Swami] Vivekananda’s legacy [of creative bricolage] has prevailed in the yoga subculture, where teachers continue to confuse Yoga philosophy with Puranic, Hatha, and Tantric doctrines; to present western metaphysical and scientistic concepts in Indian trappings; to identify Yoga as a healing tradition; to assert the scientific foundations of Yoga; and to present Raja as the highest form of Yoga.” (142)

I digress here because whatever “satya” meant to Patanjali, for us it must in part mean this: history is complex, and we can stunt each other psychically by pretending otherwise. Confabulation erects the hollowest authority, inevitably eroding what it seeks to bolster. Truthfulness requires confessing that no one possesses the truth, or special access to it, and that we must take responsibility for our creative additions to the river of discourse, without passing them off as the blessings of perfected souls no one can see. Myths can encourage and console, but we can pay dearly for them with our integrity.

As a further aside, I’d say that satya in the practice of MPY additionally requires a careful study of the facts of colonialism (and as Richard Freeman reportedly said of Pattabhi Jois’ attitude – “reverse colonialism”), the drives of orientalism both romantic and appropriative, reductionist mystification, reductionist commodification, and plain old human folly.

Following the three-century “Yoga desert” (52) that White sifts through for a thread that might connect Vijnanabhikshu to the present era, his story rolls into the oak paneled studies of the early Orientalists — they used the named without shame — who were on contract to the British and French East India Companies to learn enough Sanskrit to construct a colonial law that didn’t seem too foreign. Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837) collected thousands of shastras, of which only a tiny portion concern Yoga proper, and which seem to have been neglected by the traditional brahminical colleges of at least Benares at the time. This is reported by Colebrooke’s colleague William Ward, who estimated that only five or six students out of one hundred thousand were actively studying the shad darshanas. (72-3) This left Colebrooke in the dark when it came to getting educated help on his 1823 essay “On the Philosophy of the Hindus”, which nonetheless produced a passable rendering of Samkhya and Yoga metaphysics. By and large, he was quite sympathetic to Indian philosophy, although he was highly critical of the magical-ascetic “fanaticism” he detected in Patanjali. (65)

Early Indologists from abroad and India itself who were interested in Yoga would continue to be stymied by this lack of qualified support for their translation and commentarial efforts, so much so that every early aspiring translator, from James Ballantyne to Rajendral Mitra to the Arya Samaj founder Dayananda Saraswati – who wandered in search of Yogic help for nine years – complained that no one in India knew Yoga anymore. (73,112) White summarizes the mood:

“…[W]e may conclude that Colebrookes’ laconic, if not hostile, treatment of the Yoga Sutra undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that by his time, Patanjali’s system had become an empty signifier, with no formal or informal outlets of instruction in its teachings. It had become a moribund tradition, an object of universal indifference.” (80)

White had me at “empty signifier”, for to me satya these days also means reading the heritage of Yoga with all of the post-structuralist rigour we can muster. I only wondered once at White’s commitment here – in his discussion of the wonderful find of Bengali scholar Rajendral Mitra’s 1883 translation of the Sutras. Long out of print, with only a few extant copies available, White finds reading the microfilm a “revelation”(93), and offers Mitra’s elegant synopsis of the Sutras’ arguments in seventeen bullet points, introducing them with “One only wishes that Patanajali had presented his system in the same way, since it would have made the Yoga Sutra far more accessible.” (95)

This is as close as White comes, I think, to romancing the blood in the varnish. His praise of Mitra’s work almost seems to transcend an appreciation for sharp scholarship into an implicit belief that the Sutras do have a clear message that can be recovered by the sincere specialist. I can understand the impulse arising in someone sifting through as much bunk as White has had to, and feeling he has found a rare comrade-in-clarity in a figure like Mitra. But it raises the question, not so much for White as for the entire discipline: does the identification of something as “Patanjali Yoga” as a category of study, and the seeking out of the best and rarest sources for that category, naturally beguile a scholar into imagining implied essences, even as he or she is describing the thing-in-itself as a herd of cats? The Sutras are an unstable collection of verses compiled over centuries by nameless people in forgotten places and frozen into folios by the accidents of text production. Can we resist the desire to hunt the blood in the varnish?

Looping back to White’s introduction is a good way of introducing the truly modern era of Sutra-brokerage that accompanies the rise of MPY, beginning with the reconstructions of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902):

“In the wake of this long hiatus, the “recovery” that followed the text’s rediscovery was a tortured process, generating much sound and fury, often signifying nothing, as its many modern interpreters projected their fantasies, preconceptions, hopes, dreams, and personal agendas onto Pantanjali’s work in unprecendented ways. As a result, the Yoga Sutra has been something of a battered orphan for the better part of the last two centuries, often abused by well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning experts and dilettantes, mystics and pragmatists, reformers and reactionaries who have seized upon it as a source of political, intellectual, or symbolic capital.” (16-17)

Whatever category of expertise we assign to Vivekananda, he clearly seized the Sutras with one well-meaning and one opportunistic hand. Let it be known that the Swami hammered out his translation and commentary on the text, to be published in 1896 under the title of Raja Yoga, in less than six months, while living in New York, with no support from scholarly peers or practitioners. White has even combed through Vivekananda’s book-order receipts to discern whether he’d acquired any extant sutra commentaries, and found none. “[I]t appears that he did a great deal of free associating in his work, relying on his own extensive background knowledge of the Puranas, Indian philosophy…” to produce not a translation, but a “paraphrase”. (127) But the Swami didn’t stop there with his creativity. He freely injected his influences: Neo-Vedanta, the mesmeric backwash from his arm’s-length relationship to the Theosophists, Western scientism and the pseudo-scientific language of Western spiritualism. White:

“…[Raja Yoga] was, at bottom, a self-help book grounded in Western esotericism, but because it was the work of an Indian, its Western readership read it as an authentic work ofEastern philosophy, on the ‘Science of Yoga’… (125)

As an aside, MPY practitioners should know that positioning Yoga as “science”, as a focal point of Vivekananda’s presentation, carried with it the anti-colonialist goals of Indian-renaissance movements like the Brahmo Samaj, of which he was a central figure prior to meeting with Ramakrishna in 1884. Claiming Yoga as a science that can challenge Eurocentric “secularist” epistemology is now a more than a pro-Indian theme of cultural unification: it is a dominant note of contemporary Hindutva worldview, and global practitioners who sing it may be unconsciously allying themselves with a politics they would otherwise reject.

None of Vivekananda’s creative excesses trouble me. White makes clear that the remixing of Patanjali dates back to Vyasa (or Patanjali-as-Vyasa), and that the red violin has patiently borne everyone’s music and playing style. What is now intolerable, however, is the lack of transparency in the interpretive community. Almost nobody is transparent in the commentarial history. Shankara never explicitly mentions his Advaita agenda, Vijnanabhikshu does not confess his devotionalism. Colebrooke and the Orientalists were painfully unaware of their reductions. Hegel is out to Romantic lunch: “…the first,” writes White, “in a long line of dilettantes, both Western and Indian, who have interpreted the Yoga Sutraon the basis of little or no understanding as means to furthering their own agendas.” (91) In the present day, I’m only aware of Chip Hartranft and Edwin Bryant making their positions transparent as Buddhist and Vaisnava, respectively. “Geshe” Michael Roach, by contrast, doesn’t bother to reveal that his entire “translation” effort is a front for his New Age Neo-Buddhist ideology.

It’s not surprising: the notion of engaging transparently from one’s positionalityis the contemporary innovation of feminism and cultural anthropology. But at this point I’d say Yoga interpreters are compelled to take it on as a new standard for engagement. Never again in either the soft or hard sciences (even labworkers must make full disclosure of their funding today) will any argument about anything be taken seriously if it is unaware of its positionality: its biases and limitations, its in-group or out-group status, its privilege. This self-reflexivity is not a postmodern fad. It is the very heart of intellectual honesty today.

Had these thoughts been clearer to me when working on my own remix of the Sutras, I would have incorporated them into my growing list of revisionist meanings for satya as well. Satya today can’t just mean telling the “truth” as you see it, but must include telling the deeper truth about what is at stake for you in speaking at all. No one can be fully transparent, meaning: we have an unconscious. And we must even be transparent about that. How can we hope to practice meditation if we ignore this?

Leaving Vivekananda, White strolls through the fascinating territory of Islamic commentaries on Patanjali (143-158), and a mini-history of the term “Ishvara” as a site of sectarian scuffles that will never be resolved (172-181). I’ll let you all dive into those sections of this required-reading book, and head into the home stretch with a list of the wrecked myths bobbing in the wake of White’s cutter:

The Yoga Sutras has no stable textual tradition and no stable oral tradition. There is no lineage of continuous respect for the document itself within Indian philosophical and religious discourse. It’s highly unlikely that the Himalayan preserve harbors a cabal of Patanjalian rishis. Vivekananda had no more access to the Sutras than the non-Indian Orientalists did, and far less than we do. But it’s with White’s penultimate chapter, “The Strange Case of T. M. Krishnamacharya” that the grit of human desire and grandiosity starts to really scratch the patina of the modern Yoga myth.

White’s choice to round up the biography of a text with the biography of a man is both a formal delight and an existential hint. We get to see how the life of the MPY founder is cloaked in as much indeterminacy as his allegedly favourite book is. We get to see that the confabulations we foist onto texts are the mirrors of what we foist onto people. He begins with a generalized collation of the five authorized biographies — “one is tempted to say hagiographies” — White politely interjects (197), four of which are written by his son T.K.V. Desikachar and grandson Kausthub, with the other penned by another long-term student, A.G. Mohan. Then, with the same dharana he applied to his initial assumptions about the Yoga Sutras (in the Preface, White confesses that he expected the text to be supported by an unbroken line of gurus [xv]), he meticulously shreds the Desikachar stories to bits. Chronological and thematic inaccuracies between the four family bios, written between 1982 and 2005, reveal Krishnamacharya as the inscrutable hero of a family creating its own Purana. They are certainly not to blame, for in addition to the grandfather’s shifting oral remembrances through the years, he left his family with only eleven written pages (198) of autobiographical notes for them to weave the best story they could, and perhaps, unconsciously, the best story they imagined the world needed to hear about the genesis of MPY.

Amidst the chaos of disagreeing dates, impossible meetings with pandits, and surprisingly scant evidence that Krishnamacharya was very knowledgable or enamoured of the Sutras at all (201-202), a pattern begins to emerge as the dates of the biographies progress. As the details of the grandfather’s knowledge and exploits are enriched, so is the centrality of the Yoga Sutras to his story and teaching. The importance of the book blossoms alongside the grandeur of the man.

Why is this so? White alludes to (211-212) something that I can confirm from my own contact with people who were committed to learning with the Desikachar family. I know that through the 1990s, chanting the Sutras was becoming a curricular mainstay of their growing international school, proving effective for group adhesion and for projecting the image of distinguished study, a living link to the past, and a mythical echo of Vedic orality. I remember buying lifelong Desikachar student Sonia Nelson’s beautiful tutorial on CD in about 2005 — it had been published in 2002 — and I spent many happy hours chanting along, contemplating the verses, and attuning myself to the fiction that I was doing some very ancient and authentic thing.

I imagine I was feeling only the faintest shadow that T.K.V. and Kausthub felt as they listened to the old man. White quotes the elder Desikachar, from 1998:

When I chanted with my father, I was bound to him and his teachings in a unique fashion, just as in his chanting he was once again linked to his own teacher — and so it stretches back through many centuries of teachers… In our tradition, when we chant, we unite with God, who gave us the language, the practice of Yoga, and the wisdom of the Vedas. (214)

How couldn’t the son and grandson write a myth coherent with the old man’s vision? They are writing about listening to their father sing to them. This means that there are much more important things than facts being exchanged. In his endnotes to Coming Through Slaughter, a 1976 novel about the virtuoso jazz saxophonist Buddy Bolden, Michael Ondaatje writes:

There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction.

White winds down the myth-busting by trying fruitlessly to reconcile the various bits of lore regarding Krishnamacharya’s relationship to his “trans-Himalayan Yoga master” (198) Ramamohana Brahmacari. To start, the biographers say Brahmacari was in Tibet, but the grandfather himself puts him in Nepal. White then shows that in order for biographers to allow for this student-teacher relationship to flourish within any workable timeline, they had to propose a non-sensical walking-route for the grandfather that would have forced him to cover hundreds of miles over the “most rugged terrain in the world” (220) in order to squeeze out a few months of contact with the teacher over the claimed seven-year apprenticeship (221) in which he was instructed in 700 asanas. (208) And there are other unlikelihoods. In about four and a half pages, White calls into grave question the central prop of Krishnamacharya’s authority: the story of his access to “the last authentic yogi on the planet.” (212)

Throughout his analysis, White manages to avoid disparaging the integrity of the family biographers or diminishing Krishnamacharya’s profound contributions to MPY. But he does end his chapter, curiously, with a paragraph that begins: “Here it is useful to compare these reconstructions of Krishnmacharya’s life with that of Hariharananda Aranya, his elder by twenty years.” (223) White relates Aranya’s seemingly more stable biography, along with his publishing record, which shows granular familiarity with the Sutras. White ends his chapter on Krishnamacharya by praising Aranya for being an “authentic scholar-practitioner.” (224) This seems to be about the classiest way of calling bullshit a generous scholar could possibly manage.

After this whole journey — textual, literal, and imagined — what is left of theYoga Sutras and the men who have brokered them? I’m reminded of the opening to Lynn Hejinian’s book of poetry called My Life: “A pause, a rose, something on paper.” I’m reminded of the end of the Diamond Sutra. The Buddha says: “a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.” In our homes we have dried flowers and old photographs. We have notes from lectures taken years ago about books written millennia ago. We have paperbacks on dusty shelves that may never be read again. We have impulses, intuitions, sparks of insight — all of them hurtling into the past — and we work with these.

Despite the politics, posturing, and showmanship, these dried leaves are all we have ever had, and working with them in the humility of uncertainty offers a peculiar grace. White’s account, for all of its swashbuckling, is also a quiet work of second-order religiosity. There is a certain austere nobility in pursuing the trace, in suspecting that something has gone missing forever, or that an ideal perhaps never existed. Creativity arises as the best response to the metaphysics of disenchantment.

It’s good to be relieved of the burden of thinking there’s something we’re not living up to. Amidst the Yoga scholarship of David White, Mark Singleton, Norman Sjoman, Elizabeth De Michelis, and so many others, there are no Yoga metanarratives left standing. Ultimately this means we also cannot doubt the value of our own participation in the ongoing creation of whatever Yoga is or will be. We might even use White’s work to reclaim the un-self-reflexive patterns of past commentators as permission to transparently create. This might free us to read Hatha literature through psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and the Gita through Marxist theory. Would these readings be substantially different from earlier misreadings or politicizations of the Sutras?

What is Yoga now? Not a tradition that the contemporary global practitioner can point to, unless we want to continue to glorify fictions or prop up charismatics. Yoga is more like an approach or attitude, a periodic response to cultural and psychic stress. It’s an interdisciplinary, open-eyed response to whatever is given. Yoga takes the categories of ethics, breath, movement and contemplation and breaks down the barriers between them. It generalizes an efficient approach to creative and resilient living. “Yoga shows up” as my friend Michael Stone likes to say, “wherever the dominant paradigm is failing.”

How does it show up? Maybe like a red violin at a high-priced auction, a university rummage sale, or abandoned on the luggage carousel at the airport. You can tell any story you want about it, but it will remain silent until you play, cultivating sincerity and detachment as you practice for a long time, using whatever skill you bring. A sign that you’re really playing it might be that you don’t care who made it, or how old it is, but you’re aware of and grateful for the countless actions, random and purposeful, that brought it your way.

This essay originally appeared on www.matthewremski.com.

Image by Barry Silver, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

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Microdosing nasal spray with psilocybin, is that possible?! Oregan a start-up Silo Wellness believes so and has created this new option for PTSD treatment.

Mazatec Mushroom Usage: Notes on Approach, Setting and Species for Curious Psilonauts
A look at traditional Mazatec psilocybin mushroom usage, and a comparison to the cliniical therapeutic approach, with an examination of the Mazatec setting and species used in veladas.

María Sabina: The Mazatec Magic Mushroom Woman
Magic mushrooms are incredibly popular today. How they became introduced to into American culture isn’t usually a topic discussed while tripping on psilocybin fungi. We all may have María Sabina to thank for exposing the Western world to the healing properties of the psilocybin mushroom.

Guide to Magic Mushroom Strains
Are there different types of psilocybin? Read our guide to learn about the different magic mushroom strains and their individual effects.

Kilindi Iyi: Mycologist, Traveler, Teacher
Learn about traveler and mycologist Kilindi Iyi known in the psychedelic community for his research and exploration of psilocybin.

How to Store Shrooms: Best Practices
How do you store shrooms for optimal shelf life? Learn how and why the proper storage method is so important.

Shroom Chocolate Recipes: How to Make Magic Mushroom Chocolates
This recipe provides step by step directions on how you can make mushroom chocolates with the necessary ingredients. Read to learn more!

Why Do People Use Psilocybin? New Johns Hopkins Study
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicines has just published a new study on psychoactive effects of psilocybin. Read here to learn more.

How-To Lemon Tek: Ultimate Guide and Recipe
This master guide will teach you how to lemon tek, preventing the onset of negative effects after consuming psilocybin. Read to learn more!

How to Intensify a Mushroom Trip
Learn about techniques like Lemon tekking, or discover the right time to consume cannabis if you are looking to intensify a mushroom trip.

How to Grow Magic Mushrooms: Step-by-Step
This step-by-step guide will show you how to grow magic mushrooms at home. Read this guide before trying it on your own.

How to Dry Magic Mushrooms: Best Practices
Read to learn more about specifics for the best practices on how to dry magic mushrooms after harvesting season.

How to Buy Psilocybin Spores
Interested in psilocybin mushrooms? We’ll walk you through all you need to know to obtain mushroom spores. Nosh on this delish How To guide.

Hippie Flipping: When Shrooms and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Explore the mechanics of hippie flipping and how to safely experiment.

Having Sex on Shrooms: Good or Bad Idea?
Is having sex on shrooms a good idea or an accident waiting to happen? Find out in our guide to sex on magic mushrooms.

Gold Cap Shrooms Guide: Spores, Effects, Identification
Read this guide to learn more about the different characteristics of gold cap mushrooms, and how they differ from other psilocybin species.

Guide to Cooking with Magic Mushrooms
From cookies to smoothies and sandwiches, we cover various methods of cooking with magic mushrooms for the ultimate snack.

2020 Election: The Decriminalize Psilocybin Movement
Are you curious if mushrooms will follow in marijuana’s footsteps? Read to learn about how the U.S. is moving to decriminalize psilocybin.

Oregon’s Initiative to Legalize Mushrooms | Initiative Petition 34
Oregon continues to push ahead with their initiative to legalize Psilocybin in 2020. The measure received its official title and now needs signatures.

Canada Approves Psilocybin Treatment for Terminally-Ill Cancer Patients
Canada’s Minister of Health, Patty Hajdu approved the use of psilocybin to help ease anxiety and depression of four terminal cancer patients.

Mapping the DMT Experience
With only firsthand experiences to share, how can we fully map the DMT experience? Let’s explore what we know about this powerful psychedelic.

Guide to Machine Elves and Other DMT Entities
This guide discusses machine elves, clockwork elves, and other common DMT entities that people experience during a DMT trip.

Is the DMT Experience a Hallucination? 
What if the DMT realm was the real world, and our everyday lives were merely a game we had chosen to play?

How to Store DMT
Not sure how to store DMT? Read this piece to learn the best practices and elements of advice to keep your stuff fresh.

What Does 5-MeO-DMT Show Us About Consciousness?
How does our brain differentiate between what’s real and what’s not? Read to learn what can 5-MeO-DMT show us about consciousness.

How to Smoke DMT: Processes Explained
There are many ways to smoke DMT and we’ve outlined some of the best processes to consider before embarking on your journey.

How to Ground After DMT
Knowing what to expect from a DMT comedown can help you integrate the experience to gain as much value as possible from your journey.

How To Get DMT
What kind of plants contain DMT? Are there other ways to access this psychedelic? Read on to learn more about how to get DMT.

How DMT is Made: Everything You Need to Know
Ever wonder how to make DMT? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how DMT is made.

Having Sex on DMT: What You Need to Know
Have you ever wondered about sex on DMT? Learn how the God Molecule can influence your intimate experiences.

Does the Human Brain Make DMT? 
With scientific evidence showing us DMT in the brain, what can we conclude it is there for? Read on to learn more.

How to Use DMT Vape Pens
Read to learn all about DMT vape pens including: what to know when vaping, what to expect when purchasing a DMT cartridge, and vaping safely.

DMT Resources
This article is a comprehensive DMT resource providing extensive information from studies, books, documentaries, and more. Check it out!

Differentiating DMT and Near-Death Experiences
Some say there are similarities between a DMT trip and death. Read our guide on differentiating DMT and near-death experiences to find out.

DMT Research from 1956 to the Edge of Time
From a representative sample of a suitably psychedelic crowd, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who couldn’t tell you all about Albert Hofmann’s enchanted bicycle ride after swallowing what turned out to be a massive dose of LSD. Far fewer, however, could tell you much about the world’s first DMT trip.

The Ultimate Guide to DMT Pricing
Check out our ultimate guide on DMT pricing to learn what to expect when purchasing DMT for your first time.

DMT Milking | Reality Sandwich
Indigenous cultures have used 5-MeO-DMT for centuries. With the surge in demand for psychedelic toad milk, is DMT Milking harming the frogs?

Why Does DMT Pervade Nature?
With the presence of DMT in nature everywhere – including human brains – why does it continue to baffle science?

DMT Substance Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to DMT has everything you want to know about this powerful psychedelic referred to as “the spirit molecule”.

DMT for Depression: Paving the Way for New Medicine
We’ve been waiting for an effective depression treatment. Studies show DMT for depression works even for treatment resistant patients.

Beating Addiction with DMT
Psychedelics have been studied for their help overcoming addiction. Read how DMT is helping addicts beat their substance abuse issues.

DMT Extraction: Behind the Scientific Process
Take a look at DMT extraction and the scientific process involved. Learn all you need to know including procedures and safety.

Microdosing DMT & Common Dosages Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing DMT.

DMT Art: A Look Behind Visionary Creations
An entire genre of artwork is inspired by psychedelic trips with DMT. Read to learn about the entities and visions behind DMT art.

Changa vs. DMT: What You Need to Know
While similar (changa contains DMT), each drug has its own unique effect and feeling. Let’s compare and contrast changa vs DMT.

5-MeO-DMT Guide: Effects, Benefits, Safety, and Legality
5-Meo-DMT comes from the Sonora Desert toad. Here is everything you want to know about 5-Meo-DMT and how it compares to 4-AcO-DMT.

4-AcO-DMT Guide: Benefits, Effects, Safety, and Legality
This guide tells you everything about 4 AcO DMT & 5 MeO DMT, that belong to the tryptamine class, and are similar but slightly different to DMT.

How Much Does LSD Cost? When shopping around for that magical psychedelic substance, there can be many uncertainties when new to buying LSD. You may be wondering how much does LSD cost? In this article, we will discuss what to expect when purchasing LSD on the black market, what forms LSD is sold in, and the standard breakdown of buying LSD in quantity.   Navy Use of LSD on the Dark Web The dark web is increasingly popular for purchasing illegal substances. The US Navy has now noticed this trend with their staff. Read to learn more.   Having Sex on LSD: What You Need to Know Can you have sex on LSD? Read our guide to learn everything about sex on acid, from lowered inhibitions to LSD users quotes on sex while tripping.   A Drug That Switches off an LSD Trip A pharmaceutical company is developing an “off-switch” drug for an LSD trip, in the case that a bad trip can happen. Some would say there is no such thing.   Queen of Hearts: An Interview with Liz Elliot on Tim Leary and LSD The history of psychedelia, particularly the British experience, has been almost totally written by men. Of the women involved, especially those who were in the thick of it, little has been written either by or about them. A notable exception is Liz Elliot.   LSD Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety LSD, Lysergic acid diethylamide, or just acid is one of the most important psychedelics ever discovered. What did history teach us?   Microdosing LSD & Common Dosage Explained Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing LSD.   LSD Resources Curious to learn more about LSD? This guide includes comprehensive LSD resources containing books, studies and more.   LSD as a Spiritual Aid There is common consent that the evolution of mankind is paralleled by the increase and expansion of consciousness. From the described process of how consciousness originates and develops, it becomes evident that its growth depends on its faculty of perception. Therefore every means of improving this faculty should be used.   Legendary LSD Blotter Art: A Hidden Craftsmanship Have you ever heard of LSD blotter art? Explore the trippy world of LSD art and some of the top artists of LSD blotter art.   LSD and Exercise: Does it Work? LSD and exercise? Learn why high-performing athletes are taking hits of LSD to improve their overall potential.   Jan Bastiaans Treated Holocaust Survivors with LSD Dutch psychiatrist, Jan Bastiaans administered LSD-assisted therapy to survivors of the Holocaust. A true war hero and pioneer of psychedelic-therapy.   LSD and Spiritual Awakening I give thanks for LSD, which provided the opening that led me to India in 1971 and brought me to Neem Karoli Baba, known as Maharajji. Maharajji is described by the Indians as a “knower of hearts.”   How LSD is Made: Everything You Need to Know Ever wonder how to make LSD? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how LSD is made.   How to Store LSD: Best Practices Learn the best way to store LSD, including the proper temperature and conditions to maximize how long LSD lasts when stored.   Bicycle Day: The Discovery of LSD Every year on April 19th, psychonauts join forces to celebrate Bicycle Day. Learn about the famous day when Albert Hoffman first discovered the effects of LSD.   Cary Grant: A Hollywood Legend On LSD Cary Grant was a famous actor during the 1930’s-60’s But did you know Grant experimented with LSD? Read our guide to learn more.   Albert Hofmann: LSD — My Problem Child Learn about Albert Hofmann and his discovery of LSD, along with the story of Bicycle Day and why it marks a historic milestone.   Babies are High: What Does LSD Do To Your Brain What do LSD and babies have in common? Researchers at the Imperial College in London discover that an adult’s brain on LSD looks like a baby’s brain.   1P LSD: Effects, Benefits, Safety Explained 1P LSD is an analogue of LSD and homologue of ALD-25. Here is everything you want to know about 1P LSD and how it compares to LSD.   Francis Crick, DNA & LSD Type ‘Francis Crick LSD’ into Google, and the result will be 30,000 links. Many sites claim that Crick (one of the two men responsible for discovering the structure of DNA), was either under the influence of LSD at the time of his revelation or used the drug to help with his thought processes during his research. Is this true?   What Happens If You Overdose on LSD? A recent article presented three individuals who overdosed on LSD. Though the experience was unpleasant, the outcomes were remarkably positive.

The Ayahuasca Experience
Ayahuasca is both a medicine and a visionary aid. You can employ ayahuasca for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual repair, and you can engage with the power of ayahuasca for deeper insight and realization. If you consider attainment of knowledge in the broadest perspective, you can say that at all times, ayahuasca heals.

 

Trippy Talk: Meet Ayahuasca with Sitaramaya Sita and PlantTeachers
Sitaramaya Sita is a spiritual herbalist, pusangera, and plant wisdom practitioner formally trained in the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition.

 

The Therapeutic Value of Ayahuasca
My best description of the impact of ayahuasca is that it’s a rocket boost to psychospiritual growth and unfolding, my professional specialty during my thirty-five years of private practice.

 

Microdosing Ayahuasca: Common Dosage Explained
What is ayahuasca made of and what is considered a microdose? Explore insights with an experienced Peruvian brewmaster and learn more about this practice.

 

Ayahuasca Makes Neuron Babies in Your Brain
Researchers from Beckley/Sant Pau Research Program have shared the latest findings in their study on the effects of ayahuasca on neurogenesis.

 

The Fatimiya Sufi Order and Ayahuasca
In this interview, the founder of the Fatimiya Sufi Order,  N. Wahid Azal, discusses the history and uses of plant medicines in Islamic and pre-Islamic mystery schools.

 

Consideration Ayahuasca for Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Research indicates that ayahuasca mimics mechanisms of currently accepted treatments for PTSD. In order to understand the implications of ayahuasca treatment, we need to understand how PTSD develops.

 

Brainwaves on Ayahuasca: A Waking Dream State
In a study researchers shared discoveries showing ingredients found in Ayahuasca impact the brainwaves causing a “waking dream” state.

 

Cannabis and Ayahuasca: Mixing Entheogenic Plants
Cannabis and Ayahuasca: most people believe they shouldn’t be mixed. Read this personal experience peppered with thoughts from a pro cannabis Peruvian Shaman.

 

Ayahuasca Retreat 101: Everything You Need to Know to Brave the Brew
Ayahuasca has been known to be a powerful medicinal substance for millennia. However, until recently, it was only found in the jungle. Word of its deeply healing and cleansing properties has begun to spread across the world as many modern, Western individuals are seeking spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. More ayahuasca retreat centers are emerging in the Amazon and worldwide to meet the demand.

 

Ayahuasca Helps with Grief
A new study published in psychopharmacology found that ayahuasca helped those suffering from the loss of a loved one up to a year after treatment.

 

Ayahuasca Benefits: Clinical Improvements for Six Months
Ayahuasca benefits can last six months according to studies. Read here to learn about the clinical improvements from drinking the brew.

 

Ayahuasca Culture: Indigenous, Western, And The Future
Ayahuasca has been use for generations in the Amazon. With the rise of retreats and the brew leaving the rainforest how is ayahuasca culture changing?

 

Ayahuasca Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
The Amazonian brew, Ayahuasca has a long history and wide use. Read our guide to learn all about the tea from its beginnings up to modern-day interest.

 

Ayahuasca and the Godhead: An Interview with Wahid Azal of the Fatimiya Sufi Order
Wahid Azal, a Sufi mystic of The Fatimiya Sufi Order and an Islamic scholar, talks about entheogens, Sufism, mythology, and metaphysics.

 

Ayahuasca and the Feminine: Women’s Roles, Healing, Retreats, and More
Ayahuasca is lovingly called “grandmother” or “mother” by many. Just how feminine is the brew? Read to learn all about women and ayahuasca.

What Is the Standard of Care for Ketamine Treatments?
Ketamine therapy is on the rise in light of its powerful results for treatment-resistant depression. But, what is the current standard of care for ketamine? Read to find out.

What Is Dissociation and How Does Ketamine Create It?
Dissociation can take on multiple forms. So, what is dissociation like and how does ketamine create it? Read to find out.

Having Sex on Ketamine: Getting Physical on a Dissociative
Curious about what it could feel like to have sex on a dissociate? Find out all the answers in our guide to sex on ketamine.

Special K: The Party Drug
Special K refers to Ketamine when used recreationally. Learn the trends as well as safety information around this substance.

Kitty Flipping: When Ketamine and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Read to explore the mechanics of kitty flipping.

Ketamine vs. Esketamine: 3 Important Differences Explained
Ketamine and esketamine are used to treat depression. But what’s the difference between them? Read to learn which one is right for you: ketamine vs. esketamine.

Guide to Ketamine Treatments: Understanding the New Approach
Ketamine is becoming more popular as more people are seeing its benefits. Is ketamine a fit? Read our guide for all you need to know about ketamine treatments.

Ketamine Treatment for Eating Disorders
Ketamine is becoming a promising treatment for various mental health conditions. Read to learn how individuals can use ketamine treatment for eating disorders.

Ketamine Resources, Studies, and Trusted Information
Curious to learn more about ketamine? This guide includes comprehensive ketamine resources containing books, studies and more.

Ketamine Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to ketamine has everything you need to know about this “dissociative anesthetic” and how it is being studied for depression treatment.

Ketamine for Depression: A Mental Health Breakthrough
While antidepressants work for some, many others find no relief. Read to learn about the therapeutic uses of ketamine for depression.

Ketamine for Addiction: Treatments Offering Hope
New treatments are offering hope to individuals suffering from addiction diseases. Read to learn how ketamine for addiction is providing breakthrough results.

Microdosing Ketamine & Common Dosages Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing ketamine.

How to Ease a Ketamine Comedown
Knowing what to expect when you come down from ketamine can help integrate the experience to gain as much value as possible.

How to Store Ketamine: Best Practices
Learn the best ways how to store ketamine, including the proper temperature and conditions to maximize how long ketamine lasts when stored.

How To Buy Ketamine: Is There Legal Ketamine Online?
Learn exactly where it’s legal to buy ketamine, and if it’s possible to purchase legal ketamine on the internet.

How Long Does Ketamine Stay in Your System?
How long does ketamine stay in your system? Are there lasting effects on your body? Read to discover the answers!

How Ketamine is Made: Everything You Need to Know
Ever wonder how to make Ketamine? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how Ketamine is made.

Colorado on Ketamine: First Responders Waiver Programs
Fallout continues after Elijah McClain. Despite opposing recommendations from some city council, Colorado State Health panel recommends the continued use of ketamine by medics for those demonstrating “excited delirium” or “extreme agitation”.

Types of Ketamine: Learn the Differences & Uses for Each
Learn about the different types of ketamine and what they are used for—and what type might be right for you. Read now to find out!

Kitty Flipping: When Ketamine and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Read to explore the mechanics of kitty flipping.

MDMA & Ecstasy Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to MDMA has everything you want to know about Ecstasy from how it was developed in 1912 to why it’s being studied today.

How To Get the Most out of Taking MDMA as a Couple
Taking MDMA as a couple can lead to exciting experiences. Read here to learn how to get the most of of this love drug in your relationship.

Common MDMA Dosage & Microdosing Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing MDMA.

Having Sex on MDMA: What You Need to Know
MDMA is known as the love drug… Read our guide to learn all about sex on MDMA and why it is beginning to makes its way into couple’s therapy.

How MDMA is Made: Common Procedures Explained
Ever wonder how to make MDMA? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how MDMA is made.

Hippie Flipping: When Shrooms and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Explore the mechanics of hippie flipping and how to safely experiment.

How Cocaine is Made: Common Procedures Explained
Ever wonder how to make cocaine? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how cocaine is made.

A Christmas Sweater with Santa and Cocaine
This week, Walmart came under fire for a “Let it Snow” Christmas sweater depicting Santa with lines of cocaine. Columbia is not merry about it.

Ultimate Cocaine Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
This guide covers what you need to know about Cocaine, including common effects and uses, legality, safety precautions and top trends today.

NEWS: An FDA-Approved Cocaine Nasal Spray
The FDA approved a cocaine nasal spray called Numbrino, which has raised suspicions that the pharmaceutical company, Lannett Company Inc., paid off the FDA..

The Ultimate Guide to Cannabis Bioavailability
What is bioavailability and how can it affect the overall efficacy of a psychedelic substance? Read to learn more.

Cannabis Research Explains Sociability Behaviors
New research by Dr. Giovanni Marsicano shows social behavioral changes occur as a result of less energy available to the neurons. Read here to learn more.

The Cannabis Shaman
If recreational and medical use of marijuana is becoming accepted, can the spiritual use as well? Experiential journalist Rak Razam interviews Hamilton Souther, founder of the 420 Cannabis Shamanism movement…

Cannabis Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to Cannabis has everything you want to know about this popular substances that has psychedelic properties.

Cannabis and Ayahuasca: Mixing Entheogenic Plants
Cannabis and Ayahuasca: most people believe they shouldn’t be mixed. Read this personal experience peppered with thoughts from a procannabis Peruvian Shaman.

CBD-Rich Cannabis Versus Single-Molecule CBD
A ground-breaking study has documented the superior therapeutic properties of whole plant Cannabis extract as compared to synthetic cannabidiol (CBD), challenging the medical-industrial complex’s notion that “crude” botanical preparations are less effective than single-molecule compounds.

Cannabis Has Always Been a Medicine
Modern science has already confirmed the efficacy of cannabis for most uses described in the ancient medical texts, but prohibitionists still claim that medical cannabis is “just a ruse.”

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