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GORDON SMITH | JEREMY JONES

SURYAH CHILDREN'S CLUB by Ellen and Melanie Lee.

It was an absolute joy to run the Children’s Club at the Summer Festival this year. Both Melanie and I love working with children – even though it can be exhausting and challenging. It’s real Karma Yoga! We had the use of a small room, which we used for arts and crafts, story time and snack breaks. The children were offered a variety of activities such as mask making, planting carrot seeds, card making, bracelet making and colouring. We also played outside as the weather was wonderful – making use of the swings, slide and sand pit, and some simple, spontaneous old-fashioned activities like skipping, blowing bubbles and throwing a ball.

The children were delightful. They ranged in age from 18 months through to about 11 years. It was lovely to hear them chatting, making friends and feeling secure enough to share with us. It was also very touching to watch them say goodbye to each other on the Sunday, exchanging addresses and promising to see each other next year. It was also a joy to see parents being able to enjoy their time, and participate in the workshops and activities on offer.

So, a big thank you to Michael, Thomas, Elan, Lily, Isabella, Allesandrio, the Osho children and any others that just “popped in” to see what we were up to.

Hope to see you next year!

TOP | JEREMY JONES

MANTRA, PRANA AND MEDITATION by Gordon Smith

Mantra, Prana and Meditation are three interesting words that represent an interweaving of three different functions. I will start with meditation, as it is by means of meditation that we are able to mediate between the world in which we live, and the power and form which the other two represent. Meditation is to stand in the middle (med) and (Tat) “That”, which is a neuter pronoun that expresses the indescribable Absolute.

The Absolute is that before which we stand in awe, as it includes not only all that we can conceive of in space, but also everything else in space, that is every star and constellation, too numerous to count. The distances between galaxies, which are measured in light years, are so great that our own lives pale into insignificance. Yet on this tiny Planet Earth, we discover order, and a remarkable level of interrelationship, indicative of intelligence of the highest order. To suggest that that our own island in space, called Earth, is unique and that intelligence does not exist anywhere else outside of our own space platform is absurd.

The mystics and observers of old all agreed that apparently, out of the limitless chaos that we see in the far reaches of space, order appears in the form of stars and planets, obeying the laws of motion in their several orbits. The existence of this pattern has led mankind to believe that perhaps there is a purpose to life - that our destiny is linked to the stars and that the intelligence that determines their movements, ultimately has a purpose for mankind. Man, locked in an anthropomorphic state, tries to understand the heavens and creation, according to his own nature, in order to get closer to the true reality that underlies existence. It is far better to be on the side of the all-powerful creator of Heaven and Earth, than to oppose him.

Power is reality and man has recognised that the exercise of power is by means of words. His leaders and commanders of great armies have exercised their power by the use of words. It does not take a great leap of the imagination to assume that God the creator, also orders the heavens and all within it by the use of words. Using words, man has fashioned his prayers and sacred phrases in order to achieve favour with his highest God. Power is the reality behind existence. Man, with all his ingenuity, science and electron microscopes, attempting to probe the mysteries of life, simply discovers the space and energy that underlies form.

Matter is a modification of power. Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Yogi, has a name for this power, which is Purusha, or spirit and is described as the indwelling form of God, which enlivens each of us. It is this creative power of spirit that gives rise to nature and becomes Prakriti, the material cause of the world.

Speculative history informs us that the ancient Seers of India, by means of meditation, became aware of the vibratory pattern that underlies creation and it was these sound vibrations that gave rise to the Sanskrit language. Therefore by understanding words, or more importantly the vibratory patterns that constitute the words, it was possible to influence the course of events. Hence today we have magical invocations as well as sound patterns that can be uplifting, such as mantra, prayer and hymns.

Repetitive mantra creates a groove or sound track in the mind that tends to focus the mind on a particular theme or deity. Normally mantra is intoned aloud in a group, whispered or repeated mentally, as when using Mala or Rosary beads. It is said that the more silent the mantra, the greater its power and the closer we get to its true significance. Mantra has two aspects; it is both spirit and form. The spirit or soul of a mantra is expressed in its vowel sounds, as there is no closure of the mouth and very little restriction on the breath when intoning them. It is closure of the mouth, as when forming consonants that give form, and character to the mantra.

If we could intuit all the sound that underlies creation, it would no doubt be heard as a continuous humming, hence we have the pranava (“humming”), the most revered and ancient mantra, AUM (OM), which is recited with a nasal humming. The mantra AUM is pure gold and all sounds are said to be simply variations of the one sound. The three letters AUM also represent, respectively, the waking, dream, and deep sleep states and by silently repeating the mantra before sleep, it becomes your boat that carries you across the realms of existence and into the healing stillness that lies beyond.

A magical mantra of the breath that speaks all words without a sound, and is attributed to Kether on the Tree of Life, is AHIH. AHIH is breathing and flows with every in breath and out breath. The ‘AH’ is felt on the in breath, in which the breath flows into the lungs as an expansive movement, which if continued, reaches out beyond the Earth, beyond our canopy of stars and into the stillness of the Eternal. It is important to feel and hold the stillness from which breath and life originated. The syllable on which to focus the exhalation is ‘IH’ and represents the out flowing breath that energises and individuates. The mantra AHIH, meaning ‘I AM’, unites spirit and matter and gives rise to a sense of one’s place in the scheme of things – the microcosm within the macrocosm.

Mantras are formal sound patterns that create movement and pattern within the field of life and, as such, are both creative and destructive. The mantras and sound forms divined by the Seers of Ancient India, had more and more subtle levels of expression and had their origins in the sound patterns which gave rise to creation and, as such, were not arbitrary but aspects of Intelligence and Consciousness.

All matter is a modification of power/spirit, which responds perfectly and immediately to every situation. This infinite manifesting energy of life is called Prana, as it actively posits and responds to every life situation. This top-level response is often beyond the normal level of comprehension of mankind and arises from the wisdom and understanding that is integral to life itself, and in Sanskrit is called Prajna, which can only be perceived by means of direct perception at the highest level.

TOP | GORDON SMITH

WHAT IS PRANA? by Jeremy Jones.

Prior to the triumph of scientific materialism in the nineteenth century, when people lived rather closer to nature, both physically and culturally, the idea of a life force was a universally held assumption. How else did the plants grow? How did all living things flourish and multiply? The sheer extravagance of life was obvious, even to the casual observer. Our planet is today somewhat damaged, yet still gloriously fertile and alive. The invention of the microscope and the discovery of microorganisms reinforced this view. Life appears everywhere, including the most unlikely places. Dirty pond water teems with life. It’s on the roof of my house in the form of moss and lichen. In pre-scientific cultures it’s still a “given”. When this belief comes as part of a non-western “package”, like yoga, cultural relativism enforces a scientific indulgence. Isn’t a bit disrespectful to attack or ridicule someone’s cultural standpoint? When it tries to creep into the scientific realm through the backdoor, the scientific establishment reacts with irrational fury, like an angry householder confronting a burglar. I hope to show that, far from being just a mystical or philosophical concept, prana is a tangible force that we can feel inside ourselves and in the right conditions, observe. We cannot yet measure it objectively, though we can measure its fluctuations outside the organism, whether human or otherwise. It has also been demonstrated in the laboratory and lecture room by means of a soft blue glow in a vacuum tube, well away from any possible electrical connections.

As late as the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s, there was a lively scientific debate (which sometimes turned nasty) between the mechanists, who argued that the living was no different from the non-living, just more complex and the vitalists, who argued that the living was charged with a mysterious “something” (which they were then only able to identify rather hazily), which made the living fundamentally different from the non-living. Vitalists and their later scientific successors were often treated badly, and subject to professional ridicule and ostracism. Even today, researchers sometimes work in secret and publish under assumed names, a shocking reflection on the intolerance of the scientific “establishment”.

The word “prana” consists of two Sanskrit roots, pra=life and na=force or energy. Thus prana has come to be understood as not only “life force” but also “breath”. As we shall see, the two are synonymous from a yogic standpoint. It’s common knowledge that the lungs are a type of gas exchanger, absorbing oxygen, which enters the bloodstream, to be “burnt” by the body and expelling waste and unused gases, such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide. It’s a bit more complex than that, of course but the basic model suffices for this brief article. According to yoga theory (and in yoga, theory is always yoked to practice), that model is correct but incomplete. The theory postulated by the old yoga sages (and some later thinkers) is simply this. There exists a specific life force, which is everywhere, like an infinite ocean. All living things, including humans, are charged with prana. That is what distinguishes living from non-living things. In animals, including humans, it is absorbed into the body partly from the food we eat but mainly from our breathing. It then flows round the body with “hotspots” at places known as chakras. When the life force is depleted or blocked (usually by muscular tension), we become ill. Clearly, it is now easy to become simplistic. Other, more obvious causes of disease should be recognised, such as poor diet, infection and occupational hazard.

The name of the life force varies according to cultural origin. In traditional Chinese healing techniques such as acupuncture it is called “Chi”, in Japanese systems, “Ki”. In the 1940s and 50s the Austrian doctor and biophysicist Wilhelm Reich rediscovered the life force and called it “Orgone”. The scientific study of Orgone thus became “Orgonomy”. He built an “Orgone Energy Accumulator” (often abbreviated to “ORAC”), which produced impressive experimental results in the treatment of cancer in mice and humans, then almost always a fatal illness. I have myself built and used a similar accumulator to successfully self-treat recurring tumours on my bladder lining. Reich’s crime, in the eyes of science, was to take the life-force concept out of the realms of philosophy and metaphysics and into the bright lights of the laboratory, where he felt it belonged. His work is still controversial but his successors, mostly unpaid and self-financed, have achieved accelerated plant germination and growth in objective, controlled experiments. This is significant. With human subjects, the sceptic can argue in favour of the placebo effect – in a nutshell, the power of suggestion. This claim is difficult to refute, though a sophisticated “double blind” experiment at the University of Marburg, Germany has demonstrated raised body temperature amongst volunteer subjects who did not know whether they were in a real or fake accumulator. The “fake” subjects experienced no rise in temperature. I have been able to reproduce exactly the same temperature rise, using myself as “laboratory rat”, though obviously not “double blind”. The familiar placebo objection breaks down when we experiment with plants, which have no intellect or imagination to influence.

All known energies such as heat, sound, light etc. can be found on the electromagnetic spectrum. This is not the case with the life force. As the scientific mind likes to keep things tidy and classified, this is another reason for denying its existence. However, there is no reason why it cannot be either a “parallel” energy or a type of primal energy, which splits into different, known energies in the same way that white light splits into different colours when it passes through a prism. Another possibility is that it is a “cocktail” of known energies, which is somehow conducive to life. These ideas are my own and rather speculative but the tangible reality of the life force is beyond doubt to any reasonably open minded person in good contact with nature and the nature within, which we call atman in yoga.

Yoga is widely touted as a “spiritual practice”. What do we mean by the word “spiritual”? It’s almost impossible to define but a belief in a “higher power” comes close. If that higher power in your view is called God, then prana is the Breath of God. If not, it is the force that animates all living things, including that strange species we call Homo Sapiens. There is some evidence that it can be moved and manipulated to a certain extent by the mind during meditative practice. Some meditators and healers claim to have accelerated the healing process by diverting prana to a diseased or injured part of the body. There have even been claims of tumours being dissolved this way. The art of spiritual healing seems to be an intuitive transfer of prana from one organism (the healer) to another (the patient). The healer acts as a kind of cosmic aerial. We have much to learn about prana but the potential, in terms of human knowledge and development is enormous.

FURTHER INFORMATION –

Sadly, there’s an awful lot of nonsense on the internet about life energy. Many sites are peddling superstition or even downright lies, not yoga or science. The following sites are reliable and factual. Be cautious about sites that offer dubious and expensive appliances.

www.yogacollege.co.uk This is my site. It is mostly about my work as a yoga teacher. Please feel free to contact me for further information. If I can help at all, I will. Based in Witham, Essex, UK

www.orgonecore.org.uk CORE is the Centre for Orgonomic Research and Education, a small, not for profit organisation that can also help with information, courses, assistance with research etc. They can also supply a range of easy-to-understand, inexpensive booklets. Based in Preston, Lancashire, UK

www.orgonelab.org The Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory sells books on life energy, research tools etc. There is lots of interesting information on this site. Based in Oregon, USA

www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org Wilhelm Reich’s home and research centre in his later years is now a museum, conference centre and bookshop. As above, there is lots of interesting information about the man, including an accurate biography. Based in Rangeley, Maine, USA