Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom

of this is that a deep in-breath produces a deep, full exhalation, and it
is this that produces the calming and quietening effect you want on the
disturbed person.
Another cure that Patanjali suggests is to contemplate an object
that helps to maintain steadiness of mind and calm the consciousness.
From the yogic point of view, this technique should be considered as a
sort of healing meditation. I will give non-yogic examples of this so
that you can see its foundation in good sense. When you are ill in bed
and feeling miserable, if you read a good, serious, interesting, ab­
sorbing book, your concentration brings about a steadiness of mind
that relieves you from the distress of illness and helps the healing
process. All illness fragments and so whatever integrates also heals. It
is axiomatic in yoga that illness has its origin in the consciousness. Self­
cultivation really begins only with total self-absorption, so anything
that facilitates concentration, reflection, and inward absorption is
going to begin to heal the problems of the fissured, imbalanced self.
A further remedy is to contemplate a sorrowless inner light. Yet
this form of meditation can occur almost spontaneously in the termi­
nally sick. This vision of where they are going can bring relief and rec­
onciliation in acute suffering.
Yet another remedy is contemplating divine or enlightened sages.
In western culture that may seem an odd remedy for illness or anguish,
but until modern times often the only recourse of the sick was to turn
in prayer and devotion to the saints like Saint Bernadette of Lourdes.
Though cultural forms differ, there is a universal, perennial wisdom
operating here. When we contemplate those who have the qualities
that we aspire to, we move closer to those qualities.
The final healing suggestion is to recollect in wakefulness a calm,
dreamless, or dream-filled sleep. The point about all of these is that
they are forms of auto-suggestion, taking an auspicious object of con­
templation that is calmer, more tranquil, and more enduring and ele-