Native Yoga Toddcast

Eric Shaw - Light On Yoga History and Philosophy

March 30, 2023 Todd Mclaughlin / Eric Shaw Season 1 Episode 109
Native Yoga Toddcast
Eric Shaw - Light On Yoga History and Philosophy
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Show Notes Transcript

Ever wonder if there is more to yoga than just the yoga postures? Join my guest Eric Shaw for a discussion around his new book called Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline: 2000 Events that Shaped Yoga History.  Eric’s teachings and passions have been influenced significantly by his teachers, in particular Shandor Remete and Rod Stryker. You can visit Eric on his website at prasanayoga.com and you can purchase a copy of Eric's new book on Amazon here.

We discuss topics like:

  • What is the pre-common era?
  • Yoga sutras and urbanization in India.
  • Buddha gives us a new philosophy of life.
  • The difference between consumer consumerism and environmentalism in India.
  • Mapping connections through language patterns.
  • Who were the key cultural movers of the Theosophical Society?
  • The History of the Hatha Yoga Project.
  • Historical perspective of Krishnamacharya’s story.

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LinkedIn: Todd McLaughlin

Todd McLaughlin:

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. So happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage bodywork and beyond, follow us @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Well, welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast, I have the pleasure of bringing return guest, Eric Shaw to the channel. Eric is the

author of Sacred Thread:

A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline ~ 2000 Events That Shape Yoga History. During this conversation, I have a chance to pick some different events that have happened along this long deep history in yoga. And there's so much that scratching the surface would actually probably be exaggerating what we get to do here. So what I really enjoy about speaking with Eric is he is has been studying for a really long time, he's got a good grasp on the yoga history. And he's pretty open to exploring all the different ideas and options surrounding it. I hope that you enjoy this, if if what we talk about does push any buttons, I feel really comfortable that my heart is in the right place, I just want to explore. And I want to learn and I want to hear about different ideas. And just you know, let the dust settle if something triggers me. And if you feel the same way, wonderful. If I do push or he pushes your buttons, you can reach out to us and let us know you can reach me on my email at info@nativeyogacenter.com You can check out the link for Eric's book in the comments below or in the description below. All right, so on that note, let's get started here. All right, thanks. Let's go. Welcome. I'm so happy to have Eric Shaw here with me today on the podcast. Eric, you are a return guest. And I'm so excited to have another opportunity here to ask you some more questions surrounding the authorship of your book, which I'm showing here, for those of you watching on YouTube, for those of you that are listening. It's called sacred thread, a comprehensive yoga timeline 2000 events that shaped yoga history by Eric Shaw, and he's here with me now. And on that note, if you're interested in the book, the link to purchase it on Amazon is in the notes below. So it should be really easy for you. And Eric, what I really love about your book is that it gives me all of this for the purpose of this discussion. I'm going to read a couple of the events out of the timeline and see if you can expound a little bit because I know you have extensive time in the saddle of research and study here and yoga philosophy. But before we before we jump in, how are you? How

Eric Shaw:

did I forgotten in case or

Todd McLaughlin:

something you forgotten? Well, let's just build into a question. That's okay. It's okay to make a mistake. And it's okay to forget something every now and again.

Eric Shaw:

I'm amazed at how much I forgot.

Todd McLaughlin:

Right? I guess this is a good way to keep your brain sharp, right? Just like yeah, random quotes out of the book, and then put you on the spot to see.

Eric Shaw:

I like thinking on my feet. So that's why

Todd McLaughlin:

excellent. The first one that I wanted to bring up is on page four, the timeline of 500. So we're in the beginnings, the pre Common Era. Yeah, actually, before we even start, can you just explain what the pre Common Era what does that mean? Like if I'm brand new to yoga philosophy? What does that mean? Yeah,

Eric Shaw:

so I mean, knowledge is always advancing and it advances in the humanities as well as everywhere else. And so the way we look at history, in every discipline, not just you Olga, but every discipline, you know, French history, American history that the history of the industrial age, whatever. We've tried to step away from sectarian designations and it might be strange for someone in the western world to think about the designation ad, or BC as sectarian designations, but in fact, they are because they're dated from the birth of Christ, who is a religious figure. So in an attempt to secularize that, we now we still use the term B, C, E, Before Common Era. So this idea that the world shared something, you know, through, I guess, the breath of the Roman Empire, but even that's kind of a specialist specific suggestion that we have, we share a common era to the birth of Christ, it's still pegged to the birth of Christ, of course, but we don't call it you know, honest domande I ad, or, you know, before Christ B, C, we say Before Common Era or Common Era, so C E is common era BCE, and it's the same yearly designations, but it's it's secularized. It's, it's non sectarian. Now,

Todd McLaughlin:

thank you for clarifying that. In relation to yoga history, if we say BCE Before Common Era, what is the what is one of the pivotal historical moments in yoga? At that zero? CE, zero Common Era? Is there something that's in the yoga world, that's a significant event that is dated around about the birth of Christ or at the beginning of the CEE, the Common Era?

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, um, if you're gonna hit that pretty much on the nose, you're probably going to think about my tree Upanishad or are the Brahma sutras, which were, you know, and all these dates are quite speculative, you know, because we didn't, you know, we didn't publish codexes, or books in that period with a copyright date. So we just we date them according to the nature of the language, to the nature of other texts in that period, which might have referenced that text before, after, or texts which dealt with similar themes. And so we can kind of see like, oh, they were thinking about this in this point of history, or we know that this is sometimes you're lucky. Like sometimes it'll name an astrological event. I mean, that's the most specific thing, and then we pinpoint it or it'll name some historical ruler or Kingdom or something and then we can pinpoint it more easily to but Brahma sutras and Maitri to punish mytreat punish, it is one of the later apana shots. And it deals with certain conversations, if I remember correctly, around, actually my tree apana shot now I'm mixing it up with another ones. It's one of the the group of texts that we call the apana shots, which first came out around the time of the Buddha, the first early punishes Chen Dogi, apana shot and whatnot Berhad aranyaka Upanishad, around 500 years before the birth of Christ, but we then we get a series of these important books which are discussing yoga, which are discussing the laws of karma, which are discussing in some suggestive way, the nature of the subtle body and how it operates. And so some of those later potshots kind of get pushed into the Common Era. And Maitri powershot is one of them. And then the Brahma sutras is an important text mainly in terms of the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta non dualist approaches to understanding the nature of reality which really emerges in the seventh century of the Common Era. But Shankar Acharya, the chief teacher of that tradition, designated the Brahma sutras as one of the key texts of his traditions the Priya Priya country, Korea, Korea, Korean Tai Chi, the group of three texts which are important hit Bhagavad Gita being one of them as well, which commented on the water shots and put them into a certain category of thinking, which made them we call non dual, this idea that there is only one net way of knowing reality, and that's denoted with absolute clarity. And if you don't know it that way, everything else is Maya. Everything else is illusion. It's a very strict binary. Even though it calls itself non dual. It has a very dualistic approach to the understanding epistemology, the way of knowing. So Brahma sutras was composed around that time. The other thing that we might look to is the emergence of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras which comes close to that time like in the next 200 years it's kind of the early stating period. Yoga Sutras is produced, you know, depending on who you depend on this authority and the designation timewise. And the Bhagavad Gita are produced, which are kind of the two arms of the yoga tradition, the Brahma, the Bhagavad Gita, kind of being the householder tradition, that kind of takes the yogi path and integrates it into a understanding of duty within the life of the householder. And then, of course, Yoga Sutras, which is actually even though it's been translated in a lot, or rather, I should say, interpreted. In a householder tradition, the modern householder tradition is really if we, you know, pay attention to the actual words on the page. It is a strict Yogi tradition, it's for the Brahma Chari, it's for the yogi who is living a celibate lifestyle. So those two texts, which are keenly important to our modern yoga tradition, yoga sutras more so of course, get produced near that time.

Todd McLaughlin:

Great answer, thank you so much. And I've, I've read and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that there's three the three major or main religions in India is Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Is that correct? Yes, you can say that. And I noticed on page four 500, pre Common Era, it says circuit date for the life of the Buddha, and also circuit day for the life of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. What type of coincidence or not, do you think it is that both of Buddhism and Jainism were born, or flourishing or coming into existence at the same time? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, um, we kind of had a preview of this conversation in our last aborted attempt to make this podcast go. Yes. And it's a really, I think it's a key concept. I'm glad you asked me that, because it's really a key concept for I think, understanding the nature of modern yoga. And that is that what was happening in that period, which gave rise to some alternative philosophies, which really impacted the demonic tradition, the tradition of priesthood, which rested its authority in the faders, in the message of the Vedas, was starting to erode. It was starting to lose influence, it was starting to be practiced by fewer people, because it was less adaptable to the situation on the ground. And the situation on the ground was an arising of what we call the second urbanization in Indian history. The first urbanization goes back 3300 years before the birth of Christ to the Indus, Saraswati Servitization, which is in Northern India around where we Pakistan is today, a profoundly developed urban culture, one of the earliest urban cultures in human history, you know, with Samaria and Mesopotamia, and Egypt and whatnot, contemporaneous with those in a very complex culture, richly complex, and which was a cultural feeding stream to modern Hinduism and, or even the Hinduism of, you know, 1000s and 1000s of years ago, but that culture decline, partly probably because of happenings in the biosphere, changing the drying up of rivers and whatnot. But then we get a second urbanization that is contemporaneous with what we call the Axial Age across human history, generally, there were events that were in which we got civilizations in North and South America, in China, in the, you know, the Greek islands. And this is a time when urban culture was a rising worldwide, key cultures. And so we as human beings, had a very different experience itself. We had a very different experience of the relationship to the primal experience of the seasons, a different experience to daily living, and how we support ourselves in our sense of what we might call praxis, what we do in this life and how we think about it, and to put that quite bluntly, what we do in our jobs. And so to live in an urban culture, as we all know, we encounter strangers every day, and we encounter strangers we don't know. And we encounter strange people that we don't understand. And so, this kind of monolithic understanding of the demonic tradition, the Vedic tradition, which is very tribal. We know the truth. This is our truth. Those barbarians over there. Don't get it. We're lucky They have it a very kind of us them approach to reality, even though it had a very universal cosmology, which seemed to include a lot of understanding gets shifted into this idea of karma, which is broadly applicable, applicable to every human experience and integrates the other, those weirdos over there, those barbarians over there who have a different way of living that we don't understand, integrates their understanding too. And so with this urban culture where we're thinking more about identity, I'm a blacksmith, you're a king's attendant, you're a milkmaid, you are a, you know, you are a farrier, you are whatever, this idea of seeing people in terms of what our roles are, and getting a more discreet more egoic identity, which creates misunderstanding. When we're blended in nature, when we don't have a sense of self. We are the stars, we are the gods, we are the animals animistic understanding that we see in all the older traditions, that is starting to fade, and we're getting isolated in our own egoic. Understanding because we see other egos in the urban space, and lots of other reasons. We need a new philosophy to deal with that. Buddha gives us a new philosophy. Yeah, Chief gurus of the standard romantic tradition, which we would eventually call the Hindu tradition, give us understanding through these books that the apana shots and their leadership, and then Mahavira evolves his understanding, and how the thing that kind of ties these, these groups of new philosophies together is the base admission that karma is operative in the world. And so all these philosophies don't deny that part of the worldview. In fact, they build on it. And some of them build on it in more extreme ways than others. Jainism is very extreme, Buddhism a little bit more in the middle Hinduism still more more like well, hoppier Mahayana Buddhism kind of everything's okay, we'll just figure out a way to make it go towards God.

Todd McLaughlin:

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I've been able to read a little bit about Jainism. What is it? What is it that for those that are listening, that are hearing this for the first time? What are some of the characteristics of the Jain culture? And I'm also aware that say, if we're studying something, and we're outside of that world, that things might look really strange and bizarre, but if we were born into that culture, and have that sort of upbringing, it's not really all that bizarre, it's very normal, natural, but I know from a Western perspective, looking at the Jain culture and some of the traditions, it seems so different to what we're used to here, what are some examples of that, that that you feel comfortable explaining or talking about?

Eric Shaw:

Yeah. So um, every every tradition evolves, and every poker tradition begins, I would suggest with a very extremist view of reality. So we can, you know, think about maybe Bolshevism, you know, early communism in Russia, a very extreme view of the nature of materialism and industrial processes and the nature of human beings that they could live in a way that you give all according to one and from one according to all according to whatever your gifts were, you know, a very strict view of the human personality, how it functions the world, and then it sophists and then it adapts to reality. Reality presses in new temporal experiences arise in the religion becomes more expansive, more inclusive. Of course, the common experience for those of you who have any religious education or we think about, you know, the Western tradition, you think about Christianity, very extreme 12 disciples following Christ, but eventually, you know, Peter has a dream and says that everybody can be a part of this, this movement, even non Jews. And so it starts to expand and include Gentiles and more Roman citizens in it. it dilutes itself. So true with Buddhism, and Jainism as well, Jainism, as I said, more at the extreme end of the spectrum in terms of practice in terms of attempting to take the laws of karma very seriously. And so, we get, we get this understanding that you cannot harm anything, or you're gonna get some more karma. And you're not going to dissolve into the ultimate at the end of this lifetime. So you're going to live a crazy extreme life or you're going to be a Digambara you're not even going to wear any clothes. You're gonna expose yourself. Have to nature's forces, you're not going to eat anything. But what falls from a tree like a nut or a fruit, you're going to carry a little whisk with you, as you walk to sweep the path in front of us. You don't, by chance kill any bugs. Because that's going to cause you some karma. It's gonna make it maybe maybe make you stick around for another lifetime. So this is China ism in its purest form. Yeah, you know, the laws of karma are bearing down on us. And we were gonna work really hard to avoid them. Yeah, good point. And, but of course, Jainism shifts, it develops a householder wing. And today, Jainism is still extant in the Indian subcontinent, not really excellent a lot of other places in the world, but it has, they're known as very good business people. There, it's kind of an interesting that they went from that to what they are today, they're known, sort of the way Jewish people are known today, as people that are very successful in business, very discipline, they abide by a lot of the same, you know, cultural rules of Hindus in India, where, you know, you have arranged marriages and whatnot. But China's some, you know, had a very extreme route, and then it evolved into something more adaptive. And along that way, it actually, you know, over those many 1000s of years, it integrated certain forms of yoga, and there's certain scholars that follow that, like Christopher chapel, but that's kind of its big sketch.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah. I appreciate that. Thank you that that brings a little bit, a little bit of light to it. I remember hearing similar to what you said about catching the fruit after it had fallen on the ground and ideas about like not walking around during monsoon season, because of the potential for stepping in a puddle, and and killing an organism in the puddle or, and that seems so different to consumer, consumerism America, or its there's sometimes this thought of like, who cares if we dredge oil up and cut down every tree? It's a never ending resource that will forever be renewable and remade and renew. So it seems like a very, a completely different philosophy. Would you agree with me on that? Or do you see similarities between these two different ideas,

Eric Shaw:

they really didn't have an environmentalist ethic in that regard. And it wasn't being done for that purpose. It was much more existential regard. What's going to happen to me and this Batman, this particular soul that's trapped within his body, that's the driving force behind the action. It's interesting to interpret it as you have and and that's valid, you know, to look at history and see how it can inform our present understanding. It would be of course, being appropriate to put that understanding on that time period. Yeah. But in light of how we view our response to nature now that's an interesting perspective. Yeah, much much more respect for a Ahimsa right, for what killing beings and what killing does.

Todd McLaughlin:

Great point, Eric. I want to jump into another time period in history. This is coming off of page 31. But we're still in the pre Common Era. And it's 1583, Italian merchant and humanist F Sasaki. Sethi travels in India, in parentheses until 15 Ada, and he makes the first western reference to Sanskrit in a letter home and note some lexical correspondences to Italian Is this the one of the first times that it's recorded that a Westerner acknowledges or becomes aware of the Sanskrit language.

Eric Shaw:

It may be for a Westerner, I'd have to do deeper research to answer that more accurately. And the reason I put that detail in there is that in a way, that's a precursor to what would happen in the later 1700s with a royal Asiatic society, where there would be a deep investigations into Sanskrit and an understanding that it had a not just a lexical relationship, a linguistic relationship to Western culture, but also had other cultural relationships in which yoga really kind of gets its founding in terms of the East West conversation in that period of what we call the orientalists investigation of scholars of the late 1700s, early 1800s. When they start to learn the Sanskrit language from the Indian people and start to understand the immense breadth of transcendental understanding that is In the Indian tradition, you know, so So, so far beyond anything we find in the Western traditions, and then developing a great respect for that, and a capacity for translating that into western audiences. So societies, you know, one of these guys, I think he was a Franciscan. You know, the Franciscans were sent into India, and they had an attitude of a lot of respect for the cultures that they were sent to, you know, Native American cultures, cultures in Asia, you know, China and Japan. They were seeking to get people to become Christians, but it wasn't so blind, or, you know, blunt is we often associate with those early missionaries. I mean, they had a lot of respect for these cultures, they had a lot of respect for their own culture, they thought Jesus was the light of the world. And so they wanted to find a way to kind of find it. But they taught like, Well, how do we translate the Bible into Navajo? How do I translate it into Sanskrit, so that these people can see what I think is so valuable? Yeah, there was a lot of respect in these traditions. So they looked at these traditions with real seriousness, and they were serious scholars.

Todd McLaughlin:

Interested, interesting. Can you explain when we hear that Sanskrit, indo European language? If this if the Sanskrit language was born 1000s of years before Europeans had contact with India? How does it get that designation of being an indo European language? Does that mean that at some point, the first time a European came in contact with the Sanskrit language, that that's when the Romance languages that have sounds credits as its route started to be developed? Can you do you understand that or how what that

Eric Shaw:

if I understand you correctly, you're right. Yeah. So one thing that Sir William Jones and he's other figures from, that were prominent in the, the British incursion into India were doing as scholars was that they were kind of unwinding Indian history. At the same time that they were working with an ethnography, looking at the evolution of their culture, they were looking at Philology, they were looking at the textual history. And they were linguists, they were looking at language very carefully. And these guys were brilliant. I mean, crazy, brilliant. I mean, you look at their production, the books they wrote, and the range of their understanding, it's just awe inspiring. So very impressive figures with a lot of scholarly acumen. So um, so what what the picture that emerged then, which is pretty much still true, it's changed in its details. And there's arguments, kind of from nationalistic Hinduism now, which are kind of bias scholarly traces of the material, but in the Caucasus region, which is kind of what we call Anatolia, Northern. What's Georgia today or Northern Turkey, North Eastern Turkey, there was a culture, Hawkins away culture, these culture, these guys who supposedly first first bred horses to heal domesticated horses, and lived on the plains and traveled over that area. I mean, today, Ukraine's war and we know it's kind of the breadbasket of the world, it's that way because that whole area is sort of like the middle of the United States. Not a lot of mountains a lot of open fields, you can travel long distances without much interference and so, the horse is very useful for that. So these people became quite dominant militaristically. And in this culture that I named earlier, where we actually have the first hence that yoga the Olden, endo Sarasvati culture and what's today Pakistan, the first urbanization that I mentioned, it was kind of corrupted, interfered with by these tribal nomads. And you know, at first we thought, Oh, it was like, the way that the Visigoths conquered Rome, they just came in in a wave and knocked out this you know, urban culture, but the modern understand is it took place, it was kind of a blending of cultures, sometimes conquest is involved, but eventually those two cultures merged. And that language grouping that we call old indo European, or by its old name, Aryan, which of course is now a problematic term because of what the Nazis did with it. Is a cultural a set of cultural norms and references as well as a language grouping from which we can trace a lot of European languages mainly Latin, and find root words with references that are the same. So one way in which we can explore the deep history of human civilization, human culture, and its evolution is through language patterns, we can map them through time. There's so many clues in the modern lexicon of all the languages. So that's when we first refer to old indo European, and we tie it to Latin. We're not only mapping connections, linguistically, we're connecting, we're mapping connections, genetically romact, mapping connections. Culturally, we're mapping connections in historical events. So that's a fascinating kind of consensus, a fascinating kind of mix of that is discipline, understanding in a different disciplines in the historical record, which tie us to India, and ultimately to yoga, and helps us understand yoga better.

Todd McLaughlin:

That's so cool. I that was a great answer. I've always been wondering about that. That makes perfect sense.

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, so this was people that have told you, they didn't just go to the south, and to the East and India, they also went south into Iran. And they went to the west into Europe, so that they were just a powerful culture. And this some of these powerful cultures just influence a lot of different cultures. You know, the Vikings were like that. So we see traces, huge traces of their effect in a lot of traditions.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah. Very cool. Let me bring us a little further along into the 1800s. So I'm on page 46, in the 1830s, which I'm this might, I guess, I'm always trying to learn about history and get some sort of like, context. And I've recently engaged in watching. I know, it's like really trendy and all but Yellowstone, and then they

Eric Shaw:

are the next scene.

Todd McLaughlin:

And then they go back into 1883, kind of show this evolution of how the Yellowstone ranch from this particular show happened. And then you know, 1924, and just to kind of try to understand, Stephen, the history within the 100 or 200 years here in the US, and like, how much has changed and how fast and it amazes me, so even to kind of have that visual of like, where the American West was at in the 1800s. And to think, you know, like to read some of the stuff about yoga is pretty amazing. Like,

Eric Shaw:

yeah, that was the goal of my book is I wanted to map it across, like, what's happening in America this time? Yeah. Why not? In India, it's just in a way, it's very disjointed like to think about these co evolutionary paths Indian in the United States or India in the world. And all these events that we tie to yoga, what was going on over here, I will be going at 83 that I'm about right. If I'm thinking about right, that's about the time that they translated the SIVA samatha effects of yoga, you know, so we can think about that going on with Philosophical Society, you know, investigating India and its traditions and translating original yogic texts. Meanwhile, Yellowstone Park was being developed by a bunch of ranchers, and maybe they were still fighting the Indians. And we just Yeah, it's strangely disjunctive in and I think fascinating. It's, it's lovely. It's lovely.

Todd McLaughlin:

It is fascinating. One of the ones I noticed, well, yeah, you had just mentioned this one. Well, in 1831, Helena had thrown

Eric Shaw:

blood Aki, founder of the Theosophical Society that I just mentioned. Yeah, is born

Todd McLaughlin:

in Ukraine. August 12 1890. Can you talk to us a little bit about the Theosophical Society and what role that had in helping the West understand India?

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, massive, massive effects. So a really wonderful subject and something that, you know, I think any view of yoga history would integrate a deep understanding of the historical society. It's, it's hard to think of it now. But what can I compare it to? Hard to compare it to any other cultural movement that's going on today? Maybe I could think about I don't know. Well, anyway, I mean, a lot of artists were involved in it. A lot of scholars were involved in it. A lot of you know, people who were key cultural movers. If you were a cool person in the From about the 1875 is when it was founded.

Todd McLaughlin:

person. But yeah,

Eric Shaw:

if you were a cultural creative, you know, Henry, stale Alcott Petrovna Blavatsky and William Kwan judge and but some of the guys founded it in American 1875. And it becomes this world society where all the artists and educators and religionists, cool people were doing cool things that are kind of on the cutting edge. And you really start to get kind of modern avant garde society and every kind of level of cultural production around that time. They were theosophist, they were people who believed in the perennial philosophy, the idea that every world religion or knowledge system is aimed towards the same source. It's not a bunch of PicCollage it's not a bunch of competing philosophies, they all are trying to describe the same reality that we got that in this really cool philosophy of, of the Theosophical Society. And it blended powerful elements of yoga, primarily, but different understandings from Buddhism, different understandings from actually old Egyptian traditions because that was big. And Lebowski was really weird character who was unique for her time she, she was a woman who had traveled around the world, you know, technically Russia and you Ukraine was a part of Russia at that point in time in history, if I remember correctly, but she identified as Russian. And she had a very rich husband, and but she divorced from him. But she had all his all of his money. So she could travel around the planet having very unique experiences. And so the way I described the Bosque, she's been called kind of a faker is that she was, you know, that this thing that we say, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. She didn't know as much as she said, she knew, but she knew more than everybody else around her. So she was able to kind of weave this understanding of Eastern West, the conversation between Eastern West. And she was so charismatic, and so self motivated and so full of her vision of how the east and west could have a deeper conversation, that she empowered publishing houses and organizations. And we look at yoga with CSR for society. It's not just all these other things that I mentioned, but they translated all the key yoga texts of that era, you know, into English, you know, they translate the Yoga Sutras, they tried to deceive somebody that they translated, the Hatha Yoga predicate that translated the good on the Samatha. And they, they not just one addition, but numbers of additions with different commentaries. And so, and they, they taught the chakra system in their classes. I remember when I was a young man first gravitating towards some of this weird alternative stuff, going to a theosophical class in Portland, Oregon, I must have been like 19, like just, I stopped at a college for a while. And they were teaching us about the chakra system. I didn't know anything to do with yoga at the time. But so it was a deep, deeply rooted in Western culture form that was teaching the synergy. The interrelationship of East and West and yoga was a key part of that. So the the society that Petrovna Blavatsky founded had a huge effect on the East West conversation. Wow.

Todd McLaughlin:

Is there a current group that are pushing the boundaries on the level that you're noticing that the Theosophical Society did you tried to think of a group, a cool group? Isn't there a group that's pushing the boundaries with the whole Hatha Yoga project? Or I don't think there's something called the something project? Oh, gosh, that's a horrible way to come in with a question. Yeah, I just remember hearing something recently, where there's, there are more modern scholars that are attempting to sounds like do what the Theosophical Society was doing during that time, but nothing jumped into your mind as to be equivalent. Is there anything that comes close? In relation to the yoga philosophy? Well, you know, I know what you're doing with your book. I know you're probably wanting to say, well, that's what I'm trying to do with my

Eric Shaw:

true. That's true. I mean, the East West conversation is still very, very dynamic. Because the cultures continue to diverge in their different ways and beat in different ways. Yeah, actually, the example I was that I couldn't call the mind and I know what she's kind of contentious one because people have strong opinions about it is Scientology. It's kind of a unique kind of, you might say a pseudo religion and theosophy was kind of a pseudo religion that a lot of cultural creatives are a part of, and it's very dynamic for their sense of themselves and their sense of the world and how productive they get. I mean, I'm not a Scientologists, really, I just have a peripheral understanding of it. But, you know, a lot of prominent people in the entertainment industry are Scientologists. So that's, that was my nearest correlate it

Todd McLaughlin:

and I think, yeah, that's a good one. That got me thinking. That's cool. Yeah, I, yeah, I know. And I want to just tip toe to be careful, because I want to respect everybody's belief system. So I don't want to say anything negative about Scientology. I guess I've seen a lot of negative stuff about Scientology. So that's why

Eric Shaw:

that press, but every religion gets a lot of bad press these days, but you could yoga,

Todd McLaughlin:

even yoga gets bad press. Ha. That's cool, man. I hear Yeah, I guess I like the idea of thinking about a person in

Eric Shaw:

a in a secular world.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah.

Eric Shaw:

Any kind of person. Yeah,

Todd McLaughlin:

that's interesting. Good point. Good point. I'm sorry, I was trying to get ahead. So I would have a question ready for you to go. But it

Eric Shaw:

might be interesting to riff off your your tangent, which you're kind of yoga project. So that was something that's right, was initiated in 218 with Jim Melanson and Mark Singleton, a bunch of other people who applied for a huge grant to the European Research Council and got like $5 million to research. Yep, Hatha Yoga texts. And Mallinson was the, you know, the key. He was the guy who applied for the stable distributed hold in balaclava, and Singleton. And so many other people, Jason birch and some other people, and they, they, I think they just finished it in two to 2000. This year, I remember correctly, and they did make huge contributions to our understanding of the historical timeline and the texts of Hatha Yoga, because they mainly focused on that medieval period, get into that the year 1000. Were the key texts were produced. So the Hatha Yoga project was in a broad movement and incorporate a lot of people, but it was a very, very powerful research initiative, which vastly expanded our understanding of particularly yoga history, but also yoga texts and the roots of Hatha Yoga. So Alanson shout out to him, and especially if I mean, put him in the YouTube search and listen to his talks. They're, they're amazing. Yeah,

Todd McLaughlin:

cool. Good advice. If I had jumped forward to this one caught my eye 1927. And I've heard this name before, but I have no visual representation of this. And I'm wondering, I do want to lead this into the picture that you put on the front of the book. So I'm curious, but it says, Richard Hillman TV yogi, founder of studios and author of 24 books on yoga philosophy and practice is born in New York City, march 7 of CES in 1927. Who is he? Richard?

Eric Shaw:

Character? We're kind of near his birth. There we

Todd McLaughlin:

we are with seven March 7, pretty close. Yeah, we can pay a little tribute to him.

Eric Shaw:

So the thing about Hillman and the reason he was kind of forgotten, is that unlike a yangarra, and like K batavi, Joyce, unlike, you know, John, friend or any, are these kinds of gurus that emerged strongly in the 90s, earliest 70s 60s, even is that he really didn't train disciples and produce a kind of group philosophy that left followers so he's kind of just a node in history, you know, he's, he's kind of like to see us African society in that way, and that he's largely forgotten. But he was kind of the, you might say, the marquee celebrity yogi, in the 60s, started being active in the 50s. And supposedly a different stories for you know, very, I mean, you know, some people say he went to visit Ramana Maharshi. In India, though, I think that's just a story that was produced for the reporters. The other story is that he had a Hindu gardener in his that worked for his parents in upstate New York, and he taught him yoga and he was, you know, just on from there. He kind of did a lot of kind of didacticism personal didacticism and learned a lot. And again, he was in the land of the blind. He was the one I'm the one eyed man is king. He knew more than most people and his books are actually pretty good. Pretty good. We're pretty consumable. And so he published albums and stuff about yoga and tons of books, he'd come up with a book almost every two years, on some aspect of yoga, and a lot of it was rehashing the material, the data are written in other books. But you know, these were all bestsellers. And as the counterculture emerged in the early 60s, you know, they sold even better. And he founded yoga centers based in Santa Cruz, California for a while, which is where I went to school, which is interesting. And it kind of died in obscurity. You know, he, he had his cultural moment, where he was well known and popular. And the Sands of Time kind of dissolved into the firmament as it were. He was a key figure karate had his day.

Todd McLaughlin:

That's cool. I it made me think though, the, the picture on your book, can you tell me the story behind this picture? Because my wife was checking it out. And she was like, that's a very interesting picture. Like, who is that?

Eric Shaw:

Um, I didn't know who it was when I chose the picture. The picture just so cool. It actually I've changed the cover of the book since then. It's a little bit better, the tight, takes a little bit better. Uh huh. And it has my full name Eric, John Shaw. But um, that is a sir. My name is His name is escaping me. But it'll come to me before the podcast is over. Hopefully, it's okay. He was a British spike. And, but he gravitated to Pierre Bernard the great own in the 1920s, who is a also another figure like Hillman who was huge in yoga history in his day, but it's kind of in for gotten on the Omnipotent own was his name. And he learned a lot of yoga from him. He was a British guy. And he went back to Britain and became a key figure, both in teaching yoga and as a yoga celebrity. name is escaping me. It's

Todd McLaughlin:

if I looked in the book around about you said 1920. If I go, yeah,

Eric Shaw:

it starts working. It'll come to me. But he was the first Yogi to appear on TV, the BBC, where he does these kind of these kind of yogic feats on TV with a lot of beautiful women around them and whatnot. And, yeah, I mean, he was one of these British guys who allow himself to kind of what they would say go native he, he, with good space, he took in a culture outside of Britain, and was a key figure in giving it legitimacy and teaching it in his Anglo culture. We wrote a number of books on yoga, too. And I was kind of excited to this, to realize that that was him in that picture. Oh, cool.

Todd McLaughlin:

If you weren't aware that when you first chose it, and then you pieced it together,

Eric Shaw:

It'll kind of be I mean, you can get search for it. I mean, if you want to look to the 1920s. I mean,

Todd McLaughlin:

I think we're so classic and maybe, maybe these two guys here. I mean, you know, arms folded. Yeah, looking at this guy doing our democracy, Andros. Or maybe, yeah, it looks like our democracy, Andros and a half floor to the fish pose. And just like, I don't know, just like the thought of these guys, just stare another guy doing yoga Gala.

Eric Shaw:

My guess is that's around, you know, 1936 1938 You know, just from the fashion and yeah, right. I mean, they're not. They're not closed. But they're halfway open and interested. Yeah.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah. The picture does tell a big story on the east west. Yes, I like it. You know, going back just a little bit, but in the chronology page 95 1920s, the 37 year old Krishnamacharya returns to Bangalore and marries a young gars 11 year old sister Srimati Nam Gili Yama in child marriage being common practice in the India of that era. So one of the stories I've kind of heard is, you know, Krishnamacharya who is the guru of batavi, Joyce and I Yang gar is in the Himalayas, studying yoga spends about eight years and then his guru says, Go back down and become a family man, and spread the teachings of yoga to the house world house or to the greenhost or the householder culture. I don't know how true that is. Because I mean, a lot of times like, I always just hear this, like, I always think fish stories in relation to like, you know, the fish was this big, and it's this big, and it's this big. So I always just wonder, like, when you hear this little condensed storyline that's been passed down for hundreds for a lot for many years, you wonder, like, like, how true is that, really? But I guess, do you have any insight into that? The historical perspective of how Krishnamacharya what he learned, and that whole process of becoming like a family, man?

Eric Shaw:

Yeah. So my bet is that, um, that that was true. There can't really be, I don't think a reason for Krishnamacharya to tell that story. If it wasn't true. I mean, it's no real motivation that we can figure out for it that has much legitimacy. Yeah. And it also just seems, also seems, in character with a lot of things that were happening in that historical period. So I believe that story. I mean, it's legendary, but it seems to have appropriate level of veracity. Or he wouldn't have done what he'd done. Because he was he wasn't the kind of guy that you would think would get married, and he got married late in his life. He's 38 years old. I mean, that's unique, very unique for an Indian man of that period. Why would he do it? Unless his guru told him to do I mean, that's just one line of reasoning. I mean, there's a lot of ways that we could, I think, attribute that to a gurus. suggestion.

Todd McLaughlin:

What do you think that connection though? It was when he married a young gars sister was a yangarra. Student of Krishnamacharya, or did he marry a younger sister? And that's how I in gar met Krishnamacharya? Yeah, the ladder, the ladder. So oh, so he, and then you put in parentheses that this was during that time period in India, marrying 11 year old, was socially acceptable. I think probably anyone listening in our culture here now, we'll be cringing at the thought of a 30 year old 38 year old man marrying an 11 year old. Yeah. Do you ever get any insight into that? Or is that just like a taboo subject? Like, let's just not go there?

Eric Shaw:

I mean, we can talk about it. I mean, yeah, I'm gonna get some hate mail. But

Todd McLaughlin:

I'm not seeking that. I just didn't know if there's any oh,

Eric Shaw:

we're just, you know, opening your eyes and warning these days. So good point. Anything without stirring up controversy, but maybe that's a good thing. People are thinking and respond.

Todd McLaughlin:

True. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we just leave that one go, then.

Eric Shaw:

We got to talk about it. I'm not ever I

Todd McLaughlin:

mean, if you are, I don't want to have too many more questions, or that just makes me a little uncomfortable, I guess. But I guess I need I was just trying to look at things from the angle of that. Different cultures do different things in different time periods. And so my judge

Eric Shaw:

understands gender and how it functions in culture and kind of the nature of fecundity and birth and fertility and the roles of men and women. And, you know, I mean, there's a way in which all of that in that context can be seen to be a positive thing. He did not have sexual relationships with her until she was 18.

Todd McLaughlin:

Well, that's actually maybe maybe that's helpful. That is helpful. All right, well,

Eric Shaw:

yeah. Any any became a householder, which, you know, if you if we're gonna keep steering the sea, okay, history, I mean, that kind of allowed him to be in the world. Back in a cave or just in a scholarship den, a few people. And having, you know, kind of softened his personality because Shari was a very extreme person. And so it was probably good for him to have a wife that and one thing that I speculate about, I think it's in the book is that, you know, the that he was such a hothead, he was such an extremist, you know, he's such an intellectual and so focused on like, the black and white of the world, things, you know, being seen in a very extreme rational terms, that that his guru needed to slow him down. It is to say, did it you need a wife? You need some kids, you need to like, you know, just cool it a little bit. I think if this is your path, it will be best for everybody involved.

Todd McLaughlin:

You're not gonna hurt anyone. Yeah, a lot of

Eric Shaw:

people anyway, he was a very severe character. So that's my sense that he wanted to take the edge off of Chris recharges ego. And his family had relationships with the family by younger they were all Sri bation device, similar caste and in those days, you pretty much married somebody in your caste. And so it was seen as an alliance of two families, you know, and I anger seem to have a good A family that had like seven kids and father died soon after that. But I mean, we get the benefit of it because he became a householder and produce powerful sons who contributed to yoga, Jessica Chara, and whatnot. And he met I anger who became one of the greatest teachers in world history and tada, Jaeger

Todd McLaughlin:

and you have a background in practicing iyengar yoga. You if you have you, you've had a lot of you've had a lot of experience practicing iyengar yoga.

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, yeah. Past Yeah.

Todd McLaughlin:

What about these days when you when you do do any hatha yoga practice? Are you mostly fascinated with the philosophy side?

Eric Shaw:

I it all comes in. I mean, my training in iyengar yoga has had an immense effect on me and really internalized my understanding and made me attempted to alignment in ways that are still still powerful for me and still open up doors for me and I revere my teachers, Tony break Chanda remitted a lot of others who taught me amazing things which, you know, have opened up doors for me to keep exploring. So I anger was an amazing teacher, man of great integrity and ferocity like his guru. He had his shortcomings like everybody, but he offered an incredible gift to the world and we still benefit from it. I still benefited from it personally.

Todd McLaughlin:

Very cool. I'm because you just mentioned a second char when I got to page 206. And in 2013, it says, accused of inappropriately having sex with the students. How do i pronounce this name cast dub? crashed?

Eric Shaw:

The sun custom custom

Todd McLaughlin:

signature falls from grace. Is that the sick guitar son? Yeah, got it. I didn't know that. That was a new one for me. I wanted to Yeah, I wanna I wanted to kind of jump as we're getting close to our, our one hour session mark here, I wanted to jump a little bit more like into the current modern times. And actually, this one, I see that you're using a bibliography. And on page 223, this is something I wanted to ask you about, about windy donnager. I, for a yoga class recently used her interpretation of the Vedas, I believe was Rigveda that she had done a lot. I don't know what year she did that in. And then as someone kind of sharply correct me that she actually came from an Indian woman that don't listen to windy donnager. She's a Westerner that doesn't, isn't translating the Vedas, according to the true meaning of the Vedas. And I was, I was thankful that I had that insight, because I was enjoying reading Wendy's book, and I thought it just really interesting just getting that interpretation or translation of the Vedas or the Rigveda. What are your thoughts around all that? Have you heard that before? Is that Is that common knowledge, and I want to be up to speed with what's going on?

Eric Shaw:

I wouldn't say it's common knowledge,

Todd McLaughlin:

I guess, and maybe in a small little Smurf circle of people that are interested in yoga philosophy, but what do we know about all that?

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, so let's not call that knowledge. Let's call that an opinion. Okay, thank you. All right. My interpretation of a text is incorrect. That's an opinion. And, and you know, the wider consensus is going to depend on your authority and my authority, my experience and your experience.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah, that makes sense. So,

Eric Shaw:

if I can map that for you, Wendy Doniger is is an incredibly gifted linguist. She came out of the great the gate with an amazing book called Shiva. The erotic aesthetic really, really transformed our understanding of Indian myth and how it evolved and the richness of it. That was I think that was her dissertation. But that was her first significant book and she tied it to modern postmodern philosophy and everything. I mean, just brilliant. I mean, this woman is just genius to be on genius. Part of her genius, is expressed in her freedom from social norm. She is not shy about interpreting the erotic elements of Indian tradition, which are key, their key to the householder tradition and the understanding of fertility in the household. All those images we see on the old Indian temples of people having crazy sexual experiences, that's all a sign of fertility. And then also the way that sex was used in the hatha yoga tradition to control the movement of energy in singular bodies or in sexual ritual with a couple of parents. So, but what India has been gifted by the British incursion, unfortunately, is a shame of those traditions. Because the British were ashamed of their sexuality in the Victorian era. And they put that on the Indians. And they took it on to that whole tradition that embrace sexuality, which is a part of so many traditions before the Victorian era has been denied. People aren't comfortable about it, because they think it sheds them in a bad looks, I'm in a bad light. So because Doniger is so free with this material, and the proof is in the pudding, you know, read the text, if you want to compare her translation of the Rigveda. With some other person's translation, you can do that. I think she's, my opinion is that she's brilliant, and she's straightforward and very poetic and clear and hurt interpretations. The main reason that she got in a bad way with the Indian public is she wrote a history of Hinduism called the Hindus. And because it she published it at the time of rising Hindu nationalism in India. And because she was so comfortable with the erotic elements of Hindu history, the book was banned. The book was not only banned, but all the published editions of the book were shredded. Because a court case was brought against her for some can't expect term, I mean, degeneracy or something like that. And the case was one, because you have stronger laws against censorship in India. I've got the book on Michelle. It's an amazing book. It's brilliant. You know, it's an idiosyncratic book. I mean, she's comfortable with her idiosyncratic approaches to traditions, but it's brilliant. And it's insightful. And there's a lot of truth in it, that a lot of Indians are uncomfortable with now, because Hindu nationalism is trying to say it's an ideology. And any ideology says, All of this is good, and it has no bad in it. And ideology is as opposed to philosophy. Got it? Yeah, Nazism was an ideology. Germans are good no matter what. Yeah. Fortunately, not kosher to say it, but feminism is an ideology. Women are good no matter what, and are lousy. You know, we're in a world where ideologies are clashing. Right? The right wing has its own ideologies. Christianity has become an ideology, painful ideology, it's hurt a lot of people. So ideologies are problematic. Hindutva, which is the new rising, racial allistic religion religionist stick approach to government. And cultural consensus in India is not wanting to look at its history in any kind of open way. What's this? It's only good news. They're only good. They don't make any mistakes. And that's problematic. So they look at Doniger in this light. So back to the yoga tradition. I wanted to get too much off tack. I mean, I think her rather idiosyncratic. Got it on my shelf translation of the data is is wonderful to read. It's wonderful to read. And if and if you don't think Doniger is on point, you read some other translations. There's not many out there, frankly, which are very approachable, because the Vedas are systematic, and there's a lot of material that no one will ever, ever want to read, because it's just very technical. But she tells stories. Give me half a moment.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah, bodies on my shelf. No, it's cool. I mean, I'm really enjoying hearing that sort of perspective. I think the the, the concept of that you're mentioning about ideology versus philosophy. Yeah, is really fascinating, I mean, so when you put it in this sort of that kind of that sort of context, I mean, I, I usually like to, you know, it also makes me think of say like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, like, you know, that was something that was also banned. Yeah, that's, I have that copy.

Eric Shaw:

I recommend to everybody if you want to investigate every day, it's a really fun way, colorful way she chooses the kind of the most colorful myths and stories from the tradition and she interprets it very freely in any way. She References Other scholars. She's in the scholarly community, she is massively respected. I mean, her genuine reputations are not seen as being out of line with the mainstream at all. Okay. Very, very well. And And while I'm at it, you know, I mentioned the Hatha Yoga project at James Madison and this is the primary book they produce the roots of yoga and it's by singleton and mounts and interprets so many texts in the hatha yoga tradition and cross references them and gives them, you know, it tells us what different somatically for things that happened in yoga history. Yeah, really great reference book. That is also peer review, highly respected. And it looks like the medieval tradition from about 1000 to about maybe 1500. And earlier, so nice, little bit shout out to other yoga scholars.

Todd McLaughlin:

Oh, man, that's amazing, Eric, I mean, I know, we could just keep doing these podcasts sessions, and never even get around to like exhausting ideas that you've already come across. So, you know, for me, this is a real treat, to randomly just kind of go across the chronology like that, and just pick very, like ideas that I never would have heard about or thought about, you know, it's just really, it's just a real treat for me. I mean, I love the philosophy world, and you've done so much research on this. So I appreciate being open about it. And just kind of, you know, like you met you made mentioned, maybe we talked about a few subjects that might push people's buttons, but I genuinely get the feeling that you're just trying to keep an open mind and look at all of these different texts. And just let me go ahead and read these I really enjoyed on our first conversation that when I asked you them what you were your beliefs are on you, you know, explain to me that you are a Christian and, and I found that really refreshing too, because maybe sometimes people want to pigeonhole a yoga philosopher, there's how could he have a specific religion, because you're coming across so many different ideas. So it seems like the ability to like form your own opinion, but also stay really open to reading all these different scholars work? It's just a really important thing that we need in our current culture.

Eric Shaw:

Yeah, and, you know, I don't want to whitewash myself either. I mean, I have my prejudices, and I have my biases. You know, I mean, anybody listening to this will be, you know, aware of that. And, and just to correct, I mean, I, I, I'm part of the Hindu Christian group called Yoga, and I definitely claim my Christian, you know, my embrace of Christianity, but I'm also I feel like I'm a Hindu, too. I know, that sounds a little bit presumptuous for a person at my ethnicity to say that, but I do feel that truth. So, yeah, I feel like, we have so much to learn from every culture. And Hindu tradition, in particular has a wealth that is just beyond human can, is so deeply valuable. And the entree that we have into that through yoga is amazing that people want to go into the depths. And I and it hurts my heart that these days yoga has moved to so much of a shallow interpretation in the general practice of the United States. I mean, there's a lot of speculation about that early on about is it gonna go shallow? Is it gonna go deep? And I hate to say it, but I think the diagnosis is that it's gotten more shallow. I mean, it's painful to me. It's like, there's so much depth in the tradition. And I hope this podcast is maybe stimulating to people. And we'll follow up and do their own depth of the practice, because it has it serves people so for me.

Todd McLaughlin:

Thank you, Eric. I think you do an amazing, amazing job. And I hope to have you back. Yeah. Continue the conversation. So I You're

Eric Shaw:

really good at what you do. You're so good at pulling the best out of people. And I value that so I appreciate appreciate you holding the space for me.

Todd McLaughlin:

Thank you. All right, man. Well, I really appreciate that as well. And let's do it again. I'll keep in touch with you. Okay, cool. Cool, man. Namaste. Native yoga podcast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you liked this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com. And hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends, rate it and review and join us next time