Switching Swaras

Many moons ago your columnist bought a mystic classic called The Cloud of Unknowing. The redoubtable RGK of The Illustrated Weekly of India had recommended it. The anonymous author exhorted a young student to seek God not through knowledge and intellect but through intense contemplation and love unsullied by every kind of thought. “How was it humanly possible to transcend thought?” I remember asking RGK. “That precisely is the USP of Yoga Sutra,” he’d replied, citing Patanjali’s definitional take yogaha-schittavrittihi nirodha (‘ Yoga stops the mind’s tendency’ ). I went on to ask if the yogic stoppage of thought involved some kind of a neural hemispheric switch — from the left to the right brain function — through change of nostrils during Pranayama . Yogis know this process as Swardodaya. It’s achieved by alternate blocking of breaths in the nostril.

Interestingly, an esoteric text called Shiva Swara Udaya defined the science of Swara as ‘the secret of all secrets and reveals the essence of all benefits.’ “This science is the crown jewel of all knowledge,” Lord Shiva ostensibly tells his spouse, Parvati, in the course of the narrative. “It is the subtlest of all subtle knowledge. It is easy to understand and based on truth. To the atheist it is a wonder, to the theist, the base.” The tantric Swara texts focused on the placement, location and function of the nadis or subtle channels of the body and their superpsychic science of gaining autonomy from anatomy: on how to go from here to eternity through the nostril, very lightly!