TESTIMONIALS

All the Yoga books have gone com­pletely silent after talk­ing about Shamb­havi Mudra.It is a secret mudra in Yoga and one has to col­lect sev­eral ref­er­ences in scrip­tures to fully under­stand this mys­te­ri­ous yoga mudra. In the prac­tice of shamb­havi mudra, the most pow­er­ful mudra, eyes are focused on the eye­brow cen­ter, there­fore it is also called as “Eye­brow cen­ter gaz­ing”. This prac­tice is widely quoted in the scrip­tures like Gherand samhita. You can tran­scend the fet­ters of indi­vid­ual ego by prac­tic­ing shamb­havi mudra for a suf­fi­ciently long period of time. In Shamb­havi Mudra’s place is said to be between the throat and the fore­head. This is a secret Mudra in which the per­son doing it should sit still and con­cen­trate. He should then close his eyes par­tially as some peo­ple do when they sleep. Reg­u­lar prac­tice of Shamb­havi Mudra makes a yogi per­fect in doing it and makes him one step closer to sal­va­tion. Shamb­havi Mudra makes a per­son freefrom all his sins and helps in the attain­ment of knowl­edge and ulti­mate truth. It also pro­vides peace to the body and the mind.

Shamb­havi mudra, also call Bhairavi mudra, is a sub­tle inter­nal tech­nique involv­ing the eyes which can lead one to the depths of yogic med­i­ta­tion. It is described in many texts includ­ing Hathapradipika, Gherandha Samhita, Amanaskya Yoga, and Vij­nan­ab­hairava Tantra. These texts how­ever do not give full instruc­tions of this pow­er­ful tech­nique but rather only hint at what it truly is. It has been a well guarded secret in yoga and only dis­closed to a deserv­ing dis­ci­ple on whom a guru is extremely happy. The Agya Chakra opens dur­ing this mudra and the yogi becomes aware of the divine knowl­edge. A yogi can eas­ily awaken kun­dalini shakti in oth­ers when he is in this state of being and per­form shak­ti­pat. Not every­one is autho­rized to do shak­ti­pat and with­out being con­nected to the supreme guru con­scious­ness (shiva con­scious­ness) the a guru who attempts to do shak­ti­pat risks his own down­fall. On the other hand a yogi who is per­fect in shamb­havi mudracan eas­ily do shak­ti­pat, awaken kun­dalini , open not only the lower chakras in oth­ers but also the most difficult/premium agya chakra and sahas­trar chakra in oth­ers. Very few known yogis are known to have per­fected this mudra like — Chai­tanya Mahaprabhu ji, Guru Nanak Dev ji and Lahiri Mahashaya in KalaYuga. There could be oth­ers but very few yogis come out in the open in pub­lic dur­ing their shamb­havi state. Yogis pre­fer to stay secluded from pub­lic and pub­lic­ity and live this state of bliss. Acharya Chan­dra­has Ji was one such yogi who was blessed with this mudra when his guru was extremely happy with him. In his med­i­ta­tion he saw the rea­son why he was blessed with this extremely rare bless­ing. It was in one of the past births HH Ram­lal ji Maharaj promised him after meet­ing Acharya ji’s dur­ing penance that he would be granted a higher state of yoga in his next birth. It was dur­ing his life time he per­fected this mudra over a period of con­sis­tent prac­tice

The tech­nique of Shamb­havi mudra begins with the eyes. We keep the eyes open. The texts say not to blink but in my opin­ion this mat­ters not in the slight­est because it doesn’t mat­ter what we are see­ing. The impor­tant point is the see­ing itself. This tech­nique in my opin­ion is also not about direct­ing the gaze. Gaz­ing is not Shamb­havi mudra. Gaz­ing at the mid­brow or third eye only puts the atten­tion on an object and not on the see­ing itself. The see­ing itself is what draws us in, not what the eyes are look­ing at. The open­ing of the third eye comes when the ordi­nary two eyes become clear of the men­tal pro­jec­tions. Ordi­nar­ily our eyes are com­pletely con­t­a­m­i­nated by the “eye of the mind” which dis­torts what we are see­ing through the pure­ness of the see­ing itself. I have given the exam­ple before of try­ing to see purely when one is think­ing of one’s favorite movie. Try it. Can you do it? Can you see with com­plete clar­ity and focus while the mindthinks of some topic? It can’t be done. We are either see­ing through the mind’s eye or the 2 eyes of the body. Both can­not be simul­ta­ne­ously acti­vated. In our every­day func­tion­ing, we are bounc­ing back and forth between objec­tive and instru­men­tal aware­ness, nor­mally so quickly that we are not even aware of it. And our home base is in the objec­tive level of per­cep­tion. Con­tin­ued appli­ca­tion of Shamb­havi mudra takes our home base lower into the instru­men­tal realm, a vast realm com­pletely unlike the objec­tive reality.

The Book “The Secret of Golden Flower” also advo­cates the half opened eyes; it tells amaz­ing facts regard­ing this. It says closed eyes rep­re­sent anima and fully opened eyes rep­re­sent ani­mus, or bet­ter under­stand that anima is fem­i­nine energy and ani­mus is male energy. And with half opened eyes both energy get bal­anced. The reg­u­lar prac­tice of Shamb­havi Mudra leads to Turiya State (super con­scious state).

As per Gheranda Samhita a yogi who mas­ters Shamb­havi Mudra is a liv­ing Adi­nath and Brahma him­self! ‘नेत्रांजन समालोक्य आत्मारामं निरीक्षयेत .. ” Netran­jan Samalokya Aat­mara­mam Nireek­shyayet”. Other Yoga prac­tices and tech­niques are to raise the life force up, but after Shamb­havi Mudra, the prana stays up on its own.Lahiri Mahasaya had writ­ten some com­ments about it in his diaries. Yogananda Paramhansa repro­duced those com­ments in his ‘Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of a Yogi’. No other guru has claimed expe­ri­enc­ing it. It’s a rare occurrence.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, prac­tic­ing the Shamb­havi Mudra stim­u­lates and opens up the third eye, which is located between the eye­brows. The third eye is also known as the Ajna Chakra. When this chakra is open, a Yogi or Yogini is more read­ily able to com­mu­ni­cate with a teacher, guru or other spir­i­tual guide. He or she may also develop the abil­ity to read minds, become omni­scient and even align with Shiva and Shakti in cre­at­ing, main­tain­ing, destroy­ing and then re-creating the three planes of exis­tence. Neu­rol­o­gists have deter­mined that each eye is con­nected to the oppo­site side of the brain. The right eye is directly con­nected to the left side of the brain, and the left eye is con­nected to the right side of the brain. When the prac­tice of Shamb­havi Mudra is sus­tained for some time, the left and right sides of the brain bal­ance and inte­grate with each other. The inte­gra­tion helps the Yoga prac­ti­tioner to expand his or her nor­mal range of aware­ness.This expanded state of aware­ness enables a Yogi or Yogini to pen­e­trate into the sub­tle lev­els of real­ity that are nor­mally not acces­si­ble to most peo­ple. With this expanded state of aware­ness comes an under­stand­ing of the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of the web of life and a rev­er­ence for all life forms, includ­ing one’s self.