Book Condition: Very Good, shelf wear to top front edge with protective plastic applied to top 2 inches. Slight age-toning to white cover. Minimal handling marks, slight tanning to Page Edges, otherwise clean, clear text, tightly bound. Fourth impression 1976 of the 1968 Rider edition. Comprehensive yoga 101 of the path to defy death - from asana, purification, pranayama, mudras to samadhi. Beautiful, acutely observational account of Bernard's yogic training and practice. There is a clear (true) scientist in Bernard, as he holds and approaches the practice with great openness and curiosity. What he manages to accomplish on the path is really beyond what most people would understand yoga to be about. Many excerpts from Hatha Yoga Pradipika give depth to his explanations and reports of the practice. The effects of his practice are only briefly stated throughout, and particularly in the final chapter of Samadhi - I would have liked more indepth report of his experiences in uptaking these practices, if indeed he had more of a reaction to doing them. But nonetheless, fantastic fundamental read for any practitioner. At the time Bernard went to India in 1936 little was known in the West about the actual practice of hatha yoga. It was considered a mysterious and secret discipline, characterized by extreme physical practices leading to occult and supernatural powers. Bernard sought to test the truth of such claims. He concluded "…during my studies of the science of Yoga I found that it holds no magic, performs no miracles, and reveals nothing supernatural." He adds, cryptically: "…'by thoroughly practising first the (physical) training, one acquires the Knowledge of the True.' The training I have here communicated faithfully; but the 'Knowledge of the True,' because of its very nature, must remain a mystery." (p. 96) Bernard was no dilettante or weekend warrior when it came to hatha yoga. He practiced all the regular asanas, mudras, bandhas, and kriyas including many extreme and demanding forms. There are 36 black and white plates in the book showing Bernard demonstrating various poses. Those photos were perhaps the most famous ones seen in the West until B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga came into print in the 1960s. Bernard once stood on his head for three hours; he learned to swallow a surgeon's gauze, four inches wide by twenty-two and a half feet long, to soak up the contents of his stomach (a kriya--a cleansing practice--called dhauti karma); he actually cut the lower tendons of his tongue (khecari mudra) as well as taught himself to draw up water into his colon and expel it (basti kriya). He returned to India in 1947, this time seeking "rare manuscripts" in the hills of Spiti near Ladakh. Entering the Punjab en route to his destination, his party of Muslim porters was rumored to have been attacked by Lahouli tribesman. Conflicting reports about his whereabouts circulated for several months, and though his wife waited for him in Calcutta, he never returned. Despite his talents and good fortunes which had led him so far, in the end Bernard never saw his aspirations fulfilled and, like Tibet, fell victim to the larger forces at play during the twilight of the old empires. Theos Bernard is seminal figure for yoga in the west - a must read.
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