Yoga practice was central to the Vedic tradition of ancient India. Many extraordinary tales are told of the powers developed by Yogis, known as Siddhis in ancient wisdom, considered the hallmark of Mahatmas in both ancient and modern times. In olden times, all inhabitants of Bharata aspired to have a Guru, a teacher who would unfold to them life's inner secrets by teaching them appropriate kinds of Yoga practice, leading them to better, more fulfilled lives. No one required proof of results to practise Yoga techniques. They were there for all to see, exhibited by elders who were experienced in such matters. Yoga practices and their results lay at the heart of a prosperous, happy and healthy civilisation in the valleys of the Indus and Saraswati rivers, and beyond — today's South Asia.
Aristotle and other Greek thinkers expressed admiration for what they heard of that civilisation, far beyond the Kingdom of the Persians, who had repeatedly invaded their country. When his royal pupil, the young Alexander, departed, Aristotle urged him to bring back a teacher of Yoga to share his wisdom and enlightenment. We all know how and why Alexander was forced to return, defeated not by an army, but by the common sense of his officers. He did indeed bring a Yogi with him, but he never completed the journey, losing his life on his retreat from the land of Yoga.
Unlike their ancient Greek counterparts, European thinkers up to the sixteenth century were almost unaware of the depth and orientation of Eastern wisdom. Descartes correctly understood that knowledge of the 'Self' lies at the heart of all wisdom, describing a meditation-like process, as his means to gaining insight into the relationship between the state of Being and the overlying states of thought that mask it. With rare exceptions, the inner secrets of Vedic wisdom remained hidden from European minds, as did the entire glory of the Vedic literature. At the beginning of the 20th century, this began to change with realised souls like Sir Aurobindo in the south and east, and Lokmanya Tilak in the north and west, exerting a wide influence on the nation, and stimulating its orientation towards self-determination, Swaraj. Both these great men, together with the Guru, Paramahamsa Sri Madhavadas ji Maharaj, stimulated a young Marathi to dedicate his life to studying Yoga. Swami Kuvalayananda first learned all the necessary techniques and then started to measure them with the help of medical scientists in Baroda. In 1924, he started an institution of his own, Kaivalyadham at the hill station of Lonavla on the road from Pune to the then centre of the British administration of India in Bombay — Mumbai. At Kaivalyadhama, Swamiji started to study the physiology of Yoga, publicising his early work with experimental demonstrations of the extraordinary abilities of advanced Yogis, like being able to go without oxygen for long periods of time. Advanced adepts were buried alive for 24 hours or longer. Lacking appreciable access to air, their metabolic use of oxygen must have been reduced by almost 100 per cent. Although that ability lacks obvious practical benefits, it demonstrates that Yoga practices can transform a person's physiology into states unimaginable for Western science. Yoga offers the possibility of revolutionary studies of the human psychophysiology. Swami Kuvalayananda and his successors at Kaivalyadham continued to conduct research on Yoga and to spread knowledge of their own and others' work by publishing a research journal, Yoga Mimansa.
The present Director of Kaivalyadham, Dr Subodh Tiwari, continues this vitally important work, conducting and publishing research at the institute, and encouraging others to do so. Under his leadership, Kaivalyadham holds residential courses in basic Yoga techniques, trains students in research methods, and holds more extensive courses to formally train students to become professional Yoga Teachers. Some of the most formidable 20th-century research on Yoga practices was stimulated by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose Guru was Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath in the Himalayas throughout the 1940s. Maharishi, as his followers affectionately refer to him, obtained his bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Allahabad in Prayagraj, making him thoroughly conversant with science and its methods of research. Questioned on the matter when he was teaching in the west, he insisted that changes subjectively experienced during practice of his Transcendental Meditation technique (TM) would prove scientifically measurable.
His idea was taken up by British Doctor, Dr John Allison, who learned to meditate comfortably while having the oxygen level in his breathing recorded, technically speaking, 'changes in metabolic rate', during Transcendental Meditation practice. Decreases in oxygen consumption were considerable, and consistent. Allison wrote a report and submitted it to the top British Journal, The Lancet. He received a curt letter back from the editor saying that publication was refused, because decreases were so large that 'the subject could not have survived' In the end, the research requested by Maharishi-ji was undertaken by a student at the University of California in Berkeley.
Robert Keith Wallace was the leader of the Students International Meditation Society, about to complete his bachelor's degree in physics. After some enquiries, Wallace identified a supervisor in Professor of Physiology, A.F. Wilson at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Diligent work enabled them to identify many physiological changes, but once again, publication was declined. The American Journal of Physiology insisted that such unexpected, scientifically revolutionary data could only be published if it was shown to be repeatable.
Again, Wallace cast around. This time, he found Dr. Herbert Benson, an assistant professor at Harvard University Medical School, who said that he would happily repeat the experiments. Similar results were obtained and three papers published: the first in 1970 in the prestigious journal Science; the second in American Journal of Physiology, finally, in 1971; and the third in the popular magazine, Scientific American, in 1972, Once again, the decrease in oxygen consumption for some of the subjects was so great that they only published the average for the whole cohort of subjects. A seldom stated fact about these experiments was that, when subjects were being recruited, they had to answer some questions, one of which was whether they were enjoying their practice of TM. This effectively guaranteed that they were practising correctly.
The research could not be said to have been done on just any group of people starting TM. It is nevertheless, highly remarkable and scientifically revolutionary: Measurable physiological changes occur when a person practises a purely mental technique. The mind and body are even more closely connected than Western scientists had previously suspected. The Fight or Flight Response was well known. Any animal responds to danger by changes, which prepare them for various kinds of responses. Benson had the idea that the physiology of TM practice might be completely the opposite, a universal response with the reverse effects. He dubbed this idea the Relaxation Response. It turned out not to be so; interactions between mind and body are much more complex. Many more possibilities can occur than reversing the Fight or Flight Response. This work, and Wallace's subsequent work on ageing, forms the basis of a huge body of subsequent scientific research
(The author is a MA Cantab, PhD at MIT, DSc Hon Causa, Professor Emeritus of Biology, MIT World Peace University)