angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor and your blood
pressure will normalize. If you have trouble sleeping at
night, your excessive credit card debt is not to blame;
your brain is simply not producing sufficient concentra-
tions of gamma-aminobutyric acid. Any of a number of
medications will correct this deficiency and you will
sleep as soundly as a baby.
This material approach can be remarkably effective in
the short-term relief of symptoms. Unfortunately, it
rarely promotes a deeper understanding of life, it rarely
leads to healing and transformation, and the side effects of
medications are often limiting.
Expanding the vision of life beyond a purely bio-
chemical perspective, yoga reminds us that we live life
simultaneously on many levels. The essence of yoga is to
find the unity in the diversity of our multidimensionality.
Throughout the centuries, great yoga teachers have
awakened their contemporaries to the fascinating paradox
that although to the mind and senses the world is an
ever-changing experience, from the perspective of spirit,
the infinite diversity of forms and phenomena is simply
the disguise of an underlying nonchanging reality.
Adi Shankara, the Sage of Sages
One of the most influential teachers of the philosophy of
yoga and Veda was the ninth-century sage Adi Shankara.
Known as the greatest revivalist of Vedic science, he ele-
gantly elaborated the layers of life that mask the essential
spiritual self. Born in A.D. 805, Shankara is said to have
been fluent in Sanskrit by the age of one and to have mas-
tered all sacred literature by age eight. He began writing
Yoga Is Union 13