Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

plants, like the Middle Eastern
haoma
, or Syrian Rue, and various herbs. The formula and exact nature of this “nectar of immortality” has been lost, possibly forever, in the mists of antiquity. The Amazon region holds what is probably a similar sacred brew, called
ayahuasca
, which means vine of the souls or vine of the dead. For centuries, and probably thousands of years, such plant admixtures have played a primary role in indigenous people’s spirituality, healing, and their discovery of a vast pharmacy of medicines and healing herbs. We owe much of our pharmacopeia to the legacy from indigenous peoples, their sacramental practices, and great knowledge of medicinal plants.
    I touch on the topic of plant sacraments because it is a timely subject and something I am repeatedly asked about. I was very fortunate, early in my studies of yoga and mysticism, to have had the opportunity to meet and practice with researchers and explorers of the soma tradition and other entheogens. It is important to realize that there is a right place and proper use for everything. Plant intelligence has informed human consciousness since the beginning of time. We are dependent on plants and live in symbiotic relationship with them. To make certain plants illegal is ignorance. Rather, we need to learn their language, receive their gifts, and learn the right and intelligent use of all things. As Paracelsus, an alchemist and a founder of modern medicine, stated, “The difference between a poison and a medicine is dosage.”
    There are neural pathways in the brain that are more ancient than our beliefs, philosophies, and religious proscriptions. There are keys to the doorways of the rich interior landscape that open dimensions of beauty, order, intelligence, immense complexity, and sacrednessbeyond measure. These realities can be so powerful, brilliant, and intense that, while visiting them, our world seems like a distant hallucination, in the way that these other realities can seem hallucinatory from this one. Seeing and being touched by these mystical experiences can change us and help us in positive ways with insights into self-healing, enlightened living, and the wholeness of life. Our bodies and brains operate on chemical messengers and information exchange systems in nature. Some scholars and evidence show that medicinal plants were probably at the origin of religious and mystical experience. To say plant sacraments are unnatural, and that practices, rituals, and belief systems created by man are natural, is an absurdity. It is a shame that fear and conditioning can preclude the greatest journey … within.
    Soma, soma, devamritam, parama jyoti, namo, namah
. “To soma, nectar of the gods, who reveals the divine light, salutations, again salutations.” I quietly offered this ancient chant as we floated down the jungle river hanging in hammocks. The Amazon reflected the night as lightning bugs lit the sky opening up mysteries of the cosmos, revealing beatific sights in holographic worlds of light, intricacy, and geometric, oscillating wonder. We were drifting in and beholding the matrix of life. We floated into a void of darkness that took shape and form, turning into corridors of color, opening into the field of dreams. All my relations, the sweat lodge prayer of Native Americans, took on new meaning as each relationship in life paraded before me, viewed with the lens of insight from the sacred vine.
    There are keys to the doorways of mind and consciousness that are guarded by phantom demons of fear and certainty. They bring dread to the brittle-minded and self-righteous, preventing entry. These demons may guard the entrance but the reward inside, ironically, is the gift of responsibility and the wisdom of uncertainty.
Astronomical or Science Meditation
    Personal mystical experience, and the experience of Oneness and the interconnectedness of all things can occur spontaneously, and through meditation, drumming, shamanic practices, plant teachers, from fasting, near-death experiences, and from communion with nature. This Oneness experience also seems to be accessible from meditation on the cosmos, through deep contemplation of astronomical and scientific principles. The Oneness experience becomes a deep foundation and field of reference that informs and fills our hearts and consciousness with the infinite, the source of all. Both religious and scientific inquiry can take us to the infinite reaches of the universe where the