SVARA YOGA

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About the Author:

Born on the 8th September, 1887, in the illustrious family of Saga Appayya Diskhita and several other renowned saints and savants, Sri Swami Sivananda had a natural flair for a life devoted to the study and practice of Vedanta. Added to this was an inborn eagerness to serve all and an innate feeling of unity with all mankind. His passion for service drew him to the medical career; and soon he gravitated to where he thought that his service was most needed. Malaya claimed him. He had earlier been editing a Health Journal and wrote extensively on health problems. He discovered that people needed right knowledge most of all; dissemination of that knowledge he espoused as his own mission. It was divine dispensation and the blessing of God upon mankind that the doctor of body and mind renounced his career and took to a life of renunciation to qualify himself for ministering to the soul of man. He settled down at Rishikesh in 1924, practiced intense austerities and shone as a great Yogi, Saint, Sage and Jivanmukta. In 1932 he started the Sivanandashram. In 1936 was born The Divine Life Society. In 1948 the Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy was organized. Dissemination of spiritual knowledge and training of people in Yoga and Vedanta were their aim and object. In 1950 he undertook a lightning tour of India and Ceylon. In 1953 he convened a 'World Parliament Reliogions'. He is the author of over 300 volumes and has disciples all over the world, belonging to all nationalities, religions and creeds. To read his works is to drink at the fountain of Wisdom Supreme. On 14th July, 1963 he entered Mahasamadhi.

Svara Yoga is an ancient Hindu science and Art that has fully analysed the working of the Life-Principle, Prana, and the functioning of Life within this body. It deals with the various channels along which the Prana vibrates within this body animating it and also prescribes means to regulate the flow of Prana to ensure good health and longevity. This Science or Yoga of Svara is more subtler and all-comprehensive than the Science of Pranayama, which when compared to the former, is but a bare outline of Svara Yoga. In Svara Yoga we find various effective means to check disease and death. This Yoga of breath should be practised under the direct guidance of a fully qualified Yogi.

The modern Rishi and Yogi of the twentieth century, Swami Sivananda, has within the pages of this publication, dealt with the little known, though important, branch of traditional scientific Yogic knowledge, that has not found in its general treatment in such publications of his as The Science of Pranayama, Hatha Yoga, Practice of Yoga and Kundalini Yoga. To the spiritual aspirants as well as to lay readers, the contents of this book are full of practical import and the amount of its value, it may be superfluous to say, is relative to the particular requirements of the individual readers.

Publishers' Note:

Svara Yoga is an ancient Hindu science and Art that has fully analysed the working of the Life-Principle, Prana, and the functioning of Life within this body. It deals with the various channels along which the Prana vibrates within this body animating it and also prescribes means to regulate the flow of Prana to ensure good health and longevity. This Science or Yoga of Svara is more subtler and all-comprehensive than the Science of Pranayama, which when compared to the former, is but a bare outline of Svara Yoga. I Svara Yoga we find various effective means to check disease and death. This Yoga of breath should be practised under the direct guidance of a fully qualified Yogi.

The modern Rishi and Yogi of the twentieth century, Swami Sivananda, has within the pages of this publication, dealt with the little known, though important, branch of traditional scientific Yogic knowledge, that has not found in its general treatment in such publications of his as The Science of Pranayama, Hatha Yoga, Practice of Yoga, Kundalini Yoga. To the spiritual aspirant as well as to lay readers, the contents of this book are full of practical import and the amount of its value, it may be superfluous to say, is relative to the particular requirements of the individual readers.---THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY

Life has ever remained a mystery in spite of the inestimable progress that Science has made during the recent few centuries. Even an all-round research conducted by medical experts could not solve this mystery. In short, 'Life' has never become an object for being experimented upon in any laboratory, save the mind-laboratory of the Rishis, the sages and seers of Bharatavarsha. Our only guide, to solve this riddle of life therefore, is the knowledge which we have inherited from our ancients, the Rishis and Yogis of our land.

In the annals of the history of Indian philosophy, Yoga-Vedanta, we come across many a sane view of Life. Various schools of philosophy have differently interpreted and analysed Life, in its own inimitable way. But, the crowning glory of Hindu thought, Upanishads, has given us a correct presentation of Life. An impartial and complete analysis of birth, growth and functioning of every animate being led them-the seers of the Upanishads-to the conclusion that breath is life, energy and activity, that breathing is life, energy and activity.

Man, as we see him, is essentially made up of three parts. Firstly, we see a mass of flesh and blood, interwoven with a net-work of nerves and supported by a frame-work of bones. This mass of flesh is incapable of any action by itself. Secondly, there is the Consciousness that resides within this inert mass. Consciousness, too, is non-active by virtue of being non-dual. Even for the Jiva who possesses the ego, it is all like pitch-darkness covering a whole town, in the causal state. There is no activity either in the causal state. In the next lower state, the subtle or astral state, activity begins. The connecting link, as it is, between the Jiva and his astral body is Prana, Vital Force. Correspondingly, the connecting link between the astral body and the gross physical body is the air that we take in. The air that we breathe is a correspondingly grosser form of the Prana that it contains.

It is the movement of the Prana that activates the various centres of the subtle Jnanendriyas and Karmendriyas. It is the movement of the air that we breathe, within this body, that activates our various limbs and organs, supports every action of our body.

In the Isavasyopanishad you will find: Tasminnapc Matarisva Dadhati, which translated, by It, Matarisvan (the air, Sutratman) supports the activity of all the living beings. In the second Prasna of the Prasnopanishad you will find: Taan Varishtah Praana Uvaacha ... Avashtabhyc Vidhaarayaameeti,Prana, the greatest, said to them: "Be not lost in delusion, I alone dividing myself fivefold, support this body and keep it." Again, you will find the same idea in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (VI-I).

Without this Prana or Vital Force, no action is possible for any animate being. On one side the individualised ego exists and on the other side, its vehicle, the body, gross or subtle, exists. The ego successively identifies itself with anything and every thing it comes across. Now it thinks it is the body. The next moment, when something wrong happens to the breathing system, it identifies itself with that. But, in , truth, it is beyond all this, and further, it is in a position to control all this, to analytically study the actions of the physical body and the Prana.

When once man has learned how to manipulate this Prana, he will easily solve the riddle of life, and getting mastery over life, can lead a disease-free life for eternal years. He will be in a position to draw more and more of this energy-principle, the vital Force, from the Cosmos by a mere thought of the mind. He can ever remain young, having thus known the secret of tapping energy from the Cosmos, having learnt how to manipulate and sustain life. This is the Yogic way of cheating time, of being able to turn out dynamic work all through the twenty-four hours of the day, ever retaining freshness and abundance of energy and youth.