Ashtanga Yoga - The Intermediate Series. Gregor Maehle

of pranas (vital currents), nadis (energy channels), bindus (energy points), personal vasana (conditioning) and samskaras (subconscious imprints), and, importantly, chakras. As a result, the subtle body understands and reacts to Sanskrit. You can chant your mantras in English or any other language as long as you wish; they will not transform the subtle body. To use an information-technology analogy, Sanskrit is the programming language that has been used to write the operating system of the subtle body. If you want to reprogram your operating system, you have to enter your new instructions in Sanskrit. Otherwise you will talk only to your conscious mind, which can be useful but is not nearly as effective.

      Let’s have a look now at how information is encrypted into the subtle body. Each chakra is related to certain Sanskrit letters and certain root syllables, or bija aksharas. The bija aksharas are mantras that are used to activate, open, and energize their respective chakras. They are also used in an important technique called bhuta shuddhi, the purification of the elements, which was described in chapter 1. During bhuta shuddhi, each element represented in and manifested through its respective chakra is dissolved into the next higher chakra. This process is called involution. It reverses the descent of shakti, which during the process of evolution crystallized down through all the elements until she came to rest in the muladhara chakra — at which point we lost awareness of the Divine within us. Bhuta shuddhi is not possible without using the root mantras of each chakra and element. This is because the Great Goddess/prakrti/shakti manifested and programmed the chakras and elements by emitting the root mantras during the madhyama state of sound. In this process lies the secret of many yogic techniques.

      All phenomena are made up of vibrational patterns called shabda. Divine intention uses shabda in the form of mantra to shape reality. The ancient seers heard these mantras in deep samadhi and related them down to us. We now can use these precious mantras to shape our reality. The rishis have taught us mantras so that we could ultimately realize the divine intention that stood behind their initial use. Through the correct application of mantras we can raise shakti up through the six lower chakras to Sahasrara, where shabda Brahman is realized.

      THE GROSS STATE AND VAIKHARI

      During the final state of the gunas, called the gross state, the fourth state of sound, called vaikhari, emerges. The term vaikhari comes from the root vac, or “speech,” which also gave rise to the English terms word and verb. Vaikhari is audible sound, and during the vaikhari state all nonmantric languages emerge, as do all other audible sounds. Sounds that happen to be outside the range of human hearing, such as those with an extremely high or low frequency, are also called vaikhari.

      The languages that developed during the vaikhari state are nonmantric; these include all the Indo-European languages (such as English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Iranian, Greek, Hindi, and Marathi). Although these nonmantric languages have Sanskrit roots, they are fundamentally different from Sanskrit, in that all nonmantric languages change over time. Words lose their original meanings and take on new ones. In Sanskrit, however, words have a fixed meaning because they are constructed from fixed elements. If a word is lost, it can be reconstructed from precise grammatical and phonetic rules, which are the same today as they were thousands of years ago. Also, whereas modern languages have a limited number of expressions, a nearly endless number of Sanskrit words can be created or reconstructed by following these exact, fixed rules and laws. These rules were defined by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini, whose grammar is known as Ashtadhyayi.

      Sanskrit as a Spiritual Discipline

      Learning and using Sanskrit is a spiritual practice in itself. The Sanskrit language is designed in such a way that you must use your entire brain capacity if you want to understand and speak it reasonably well. Further, the way in which Sanskrit is pronounced can spawn important changes in the brain itself. Westerners often smile at the “strange” way Indians pronounce words. Indians seem to speak more from the back of the head, which reflects the fact that they tend to contemplate for a long time before they take action. Westerners, on the other hand, speak mainly through their incisors, which may correlate with a tendency to act quickly and without deep thought.

      The way Indians think and their outstanding contributions in the areas of religion, philosophy, and art are deeply related to how Sanskrit is pronounced. Indians articulate sounds using five locations in the mouth: lips, teeth, hard palate, soft palate, and throat. This way of producing sounds involves the entire skull and encourages the activation of the half-dozen energy centers in the head; these include the lalana or talu chakra, the manas chakra, the indu or soma chakra, the brahmarandhra or nirvana chakra, and the guru chakra. All these chakras are located in the area of the soft palate, especially at the rear and higher end, or in the direct vicinity of the palatal region and the cerebrum.

       ENGLISH VERSUS SANSKRIT

      English, like most other modern, nonmantric languages, has a strongly simplified grammar compared to that of Sanskrit. There are fewer grammatical cases, often no case endings, and fewer tenses (time modes). This has made it easier for English to jump boundaries and establish itself as an international trade language.

      Another apparent virtue of the English language is its function as a vehicle of the idea of democracy. A complicated and sophisticated language such as Sanskrit, which requires a decade or more of intense study to master, will generally be spoken only by a small group whose members have the means to invest this time. (The ancient Indian sages solved this problem by reducing their needs and thereby precluding the need to work.) A democratic society is more likely to develop in a population that cannot so easily use language to differentiate between the privileged and the unprivileged.

      While English has outdone all other languages in these fields, it falls significantly short in accurately portraying metaphysical and mystical concepts with a minimum of ambiguity. English simply does not have enough grammatical cases, tenses, or words for this task. Sanskrit is the language of choice when philosophy and mysticism are the subjects. It is no wonder that more than 150,000 treatises still exist in Sanskrit, and many times that number have been lost.

      The presence of so many energy centers near the soft palate makes this part of the body the most vital and powerful for the purpose of yoga. It also explains the significance of three mudras (energetic seals): the Nabho Mudra, the Manduka Mudra, and the Kechari Mudra. In Nabho Mudra, the tongue is inverted and placed as far up as possible against the soft palate. It is used for the purpose of “milking” the amrita (nectar) oozing from the soma chakra. Manduka Mudra is similar to Nabho Mudra except that the tongue is actively moved left and right to make the nectar flow. In Kechari Mudra, the tongue is first massaged and lengthened, a process that can be drawn out and uncomfortable. Finally it is pressed up against the entire length of the soft palate and used to close the throat, thus achieving breath retention, while the gaze is fixed to the third eye. The prana is thus forced to enter sushumna (the central energy channel), and the brahmarandhra chakra (one of the palatal chakras) is opened.

      The proper pronunciation of Sanskrit requires similar though less extreme movements of the tongue. The effects on the energy centers of the head are also similar but more subtle and spread over a longer time period. Sanskrit pronunciation of the simple word Ashtanga, for example, is completely different from how Westerners pronounce it. To make the sh and t sounds, Indians place the tongue in retroflex/cerebral position, and to make the various n sounds they place it in palatal position, which means that both the hard and the soft palates are receiving vibrational or mantric input when the word is pronounced. The same is true for many other Sanskrit words. Because of this, speaking Sanskrit permanently stimulates the cerebral chakras. Sanskrit is therefore the most cerebral of all languages in terms of not only structure and content but also pronunciation.

      This is one of the reasons why most of the spiritually liberated people have emerged in India. If there were a map that